[Fic] Unforgivable [2/2]
Title: Unforgivable
Authors: hellzabeth & candesceres
Characters/Pairings: England, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal(OC) (with guest appearances by Grindelwald and Dumbledore)
Rating: R
Warning: (monster_au) Language, blood and gore, violence, graphic descriptions, witches and warlocks and vampires, oh my
Summary: The year is 1945. In the European theater, the Great Wizarding War is at its peak. The monster hunters, as agents of the Vatican, are working overtime. But where do you draw the line between monster and man?
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The vampire ground his teeth, before letting loose a frustrated yell and kicking an unfortunate nearby tree, which with a groan and a crash, fell to the ground. He stared at it, still angry, before turning on his heel and stalking back towards the house. Traitor. What would they know about traitors. He’d done nothing to betray anyone, never told Gabriel anything of that manner and vice versa. That was their agreement; not to bring that kind of thing into their relationship, as much as they could.
He was still fuming when he entered the front door of his house, gazing at the destruction. Great, just what he needed, more of a mess to add to what there had been before. He couldn’t be bothered with it before, but this was getting frankly ridiculous. He would have to get this fixed. All of it. Eventually.
Right now though, right now there was something he had to take care of.
The scent of the hunter’s blood still permeated the ruined hallway, snaking around the corners like an unpleasant reminder as he made his way through the rubble back to his study. There was a faint green glow emanating from the open doorway but this one was different to the Killing Curse. It was... softer somewhat. Ancient. Old.
Antonio was right where he had left him, crouched over with his brother’s head on his knees. The pouch Arthur had seen him grasping just now was strewn to the side, spilling its contents across the bloody carpet. He caught a flash of gold. The green light on the other hand, was coming from Gabriel’s corpse. Thick green lines were spreading out from the cavity in his chest, like many glowing, patterned veins. They crisscrossed over his skin, drawing cracks through the congealing blood, spidery lines weaving their way up and around Antonio’s arms as they lay across his brother’s chest. Arthur could not get a good look at what was going on from where he was standing, but his own chest felt tight just by watching the scene unfold that he could not bring himself to go any closer.
Antonio was muttering to himself, low, heartfelt words; his forehead pressed against Gabriel’s own. Two fingers of one hand were pressed against his brother’s closed eyelids, the middle two, he was surprised to see, had forced their way into Gabriel’s slack mouth. He appeared to be holding something in place there. The muttering grew more urgent, and Arthur caught that glint of gold again, this time across Gabriel’s face. Antonio’s fist was clenched over the space where his brother’s heart had used to be, bloodied and grasping something in a white-knuckled fist. The green, spidery lines of old magic centred here. He was trembling.
Gabriel’s heart skipped a beat, and rather literally to boot. It was in morbid fascination that he watched the disconnected muscle contract and relax. It was slow, almost imperceptible and Arthur didn’t dare blink in case it happened to be a trick of the light. But the heart was beating, barely, magic spiralling across his desk and sliding over the silver tray to cradle it in an incorporeal green mesh. It was surreal, to see the heart beating wherein the body could not even move to breathe.
So this was it. This was Gabriel’s curse in it’s fully functioning, macabre glory. Arthur wasn’t one to be easily disgusted by gore (occupational perk), rather, he was fascinated. Powerful, deep and ancient magics could be the only things at work here. He felt slightly humbled to be watching such a thing, which is saying something, vampires being noted for their pride above all else. There was something oddly familiar about this green power, this energy that tied Gabriel to the mortal world whether he liked it or not, but Arthur couldn’t put his finger on it.
To whatever being this power belonged, it seemed awfully intent on keeping Gabriel alive, no matter how much he suffered. Even a vampire would find it difficult, nigh on impossible to recover from an injury like this.
He cleared his throat carefully. “What is this?” he asked, a vague enough question that it could be answered any way needed.
Antonio turned his head. His eyes were greener than his brother’s, but in this moment they were not only green, but glowing, magic rippling through the very core of his being. Considering the side they fought for, and the personal vendetta both brothers had against witchcraft, it was almost ironic. The light faded a little as he stopped muttering, fixing Arthur with an unblinking gaze. The heart stopped beating.
“This is the only way I can think of to keep my brother alive,” he said in a voice that sounded faraway, not quite all there. He lifted his head, smoothing Gabriel’s hair back from his forehead. Arthur could not see his eyes then, for they were hidden, eyelids weighted shut by the placement of two intricately carved gold coins. It was from these pieces of gold that the ancient magic radiated the strongest, and judging from the position of Antonio’s hands, Arthur could guess that another such coin was currently being held in place in Gabriel’s mouth.
“The eyes and the mouth are the biggest channels to the soul,” he went on, at Arthur’s questioning look. “All magic comes from a gaze, thoughts, words. So it is from these points on the body that the magic must enter again. Hermano’s soul is safe.” His eyes flickered to the heart on its silver tray. “All that’s left is putting the heart back where it belongs.”
Arthur hesitated. “So you mean,” he began carefully, “He’s not...”
“He’s dead,” Antonio replied, with so much feeling in those words alone that it ached. He bent over and pulled his brother closer. “I’ll be honest with you, he has never been more dead than he is now. And why shouldn’t he be? Regenerating cells,” when Arthur glanced at him again he had to double-take, for there seemed to be more lines on Antonio’s face than there had been previously, “at the cost of one’s life force, that is easy enough.” He shook his head, and the hair greying at his temples disappeared; he was back to the age he seemed to permanently maintain. “But no one can live without a heart. I’m surprised your witchy friends didn’t try to take it with them actually...” he trailed off thoughtfully. “...we’d have been in real trouble then.”
“I wouldn’t have allowed it.” Arthur said quickly. “Gabriel’s heart is...” mine is what he wanted to say, but he realised how silly that sounded. For one thing, he meant metaphorically, and this was very much in the physical sense. For another, Antonio might take it to mean that he had suddenly acquired a taste for Gabriel’s cursed, quite foul tasting blood. “... either way, it should go back inside him. The longer it stays out here, the more the smell is going to permeate the house.” He said, disguising his real need to see Gabriel just open his eyes and look at him again. Death did not become him, not like this.
“The smell is the least of our worries,” Antonio said darkly, and looked up. Already the blood that had the heart had been lying in had dried and crumbled into a fine red dust. Where the green magic receded tiny cracks began to zigzag across Gabriel’s skin, dust coating his palms and fingertips. Antonio only wiped away as much as he dared, shifting himself carefully so he wouldn’t jostle the body. “We’re running out of time.” He ducked his head again as his brother’s flesh thinned and started drying out; muscles weakening, bone beginning to show through. “Out-of-body experiences were never part of the curse.” There was a grim sort of turn to his mouth now. “Six hundred years and age has caught up to you at last, hermano...”
He placed his hands back over his brother’s sunken-in eyes, against his mouth. The old coins began to spark with magic again. “...let’s not allow it to get the best of us okay?” The green glow began to spread again, pushing back the brink of decay. He didn’t look at Arthur again, closing his eyes. “I don’t like you,” he said bluntly to the open air, “And I’d gladly go the next thousand years without ever asking a favour of you, but if you care for my brother half as much as he seems to care for you, I’ll need your help.”
The magic began to crawl up his arms again, and Antonio grit his teeth against it, taking slow, measured breaths as he forced it down to the points where it was needed. “I need you to hold his heart,” he jerked his head in the direction of the desk, “and don’t drop it mind, or I’ll nail you to a tree.” He curled over his brother, “I can’t risk moving him now without breaking anything, and I’d take it myself it I didn’t have to keep the magic flowing inside him. We only have one shot at this, so don’t ruin the chance.”
He was silent for a longer minute still, as though contemplating whether he really wanted to go through with this or not, especially with Arthur of all people, but in the end his concern for Gabriel won out. “I don’t know if the cavity is big enough to just squeeze it back in,” he grated out at last, “so I need you to find a way to cut him open so we can at least put his heart back roughly where it should be. It’s a bit of a reverse from what your kind are used to, but you should be pretty good at that, being a vampire and all.” The jab fell flat even on his own ears; Arthur noted that even his smirk seemed weak and halfhearted.
“If all goes well,” Antonio chuckled without his usual sunny sense of humor, “and that’s a pretty big if, once it’s back where it belongs the curse will have no problem recognizing that everything is where it should be and start the healing process on its own.” He hung his head.
“...that’s just a theory though,” he admitted in a low voice, “We... I’ve never had to do this before. If it doesn’t work, hermano, he’ll...Well.” He glanced at Arthur with magic glowing in his eyes, and tears rolling down his cheeks. “...I think you’ll know why.”
Arthur looked from Gabriel’s prone form, to the pulsating heart on the platter. Steeling himself, he tried to think of it as just another heart, just like usual, only backwards. Carefully, like handling a newborn, he picked the heart up, holding it with both hands just in case. He was very aware how delicate he would have to be with this, what with the trauma it had already gone through. He knelt down next to Gabriel, eyeing the open wound. He’d have to open it up further just to get the heart back in place properly. He knew the biology of a human body well enough to put the heart back where it needed to go, but the smell was making him gag a little. As such, he stopped his own breathing, expelling all air in a sudden sigh, and didn’t draw it back in.
His nails were more than enough to cut flesh, as demonstrated earlier that night, but it didn’t make him feel any better about it. The green magic that flowed across and through Gabriel tingled on his hands, hot and cold at the same time, and he suddenly felt like an insignificant insect. Gabriel’s curse had been laid upon him by an Aztec god, but the Hunter had always neglected to mention which one. If this worked, Arthur was definitely going to have to ask him. This familiarity... it couldn’t be...
No time to dwell on that. Now the opening was wide enough, Arthur cautiously felt his way inside. Cold. Gab was already going cold, and when he’d been so used to the man exuding heat every time he’d touched him, it was a disturbing feeling. There was a lot of damage from where the heart had been pulled out in the first place, but the green magic was inside as well, tracing patterns across organs. Finding the empty space where the heart should have sat, Arthur pursed his lips, and replaced the beating organ where it was meant to go. He turned it a few times to get it aligned with the severed arteries, and then removed his hand.
It was a good thing he did, because the green energy pulsed, like it was rejecting him, pushing him away with a sense of foreboding.
A heartbeat sounded in his ears, deep and rattling. The green light intensified, lining the wound with a sharp glow that moved, rippling across the marks that lined Gabriel’s entire body. The magic had found its sticking point and revelled in it, forming a spiral over the chest area that wound itself around and tapered off, skin knitting together and repairing itself wherever the light faded, and it was fading fast. The sound of a heartbeat came sluggishly, but as the magic seeped away it came on stronger, slow at first, before expanding, growing steadier. The light followed the incision Arthur had made in Gabriel’s chest, and where it disappeared white scar tissue remained. At last it split from the centre, dancing across from the wound, which had since formed a great knotted scar, white and tender against otherwise tanned skin. The light began to fade faster now, as though it were being erased line by line through the work of an invisible hand, taking the dust and the cracks and melding seamlessly under skin as though they had never been.
Antonio was murmuring faster now, clenching his sweaty palms together as he hunched over Gabriel, until at last the light retreated, crawling slowly up his brother’s face and into his mouth, through his nose and ears and bleeding into his eyes. There was a flash of gold as the green light sank into these and for a moment Arthur thought he could see its faint glow travel down Gabriel’s throat and out of sight, but then he blinked, and the moment had passed. Antonio stopped whatever words he had been pleading, perhaps praying, and the force of magic faded from the room entirely.
The sound of a heartbeat in Arthur’s ears abruptly stopped, and a hushed, uncomfortable silence fell upon them. Antonio glanced up and caught his eye; he seemed to be at a loss, for Gabriel did not move, did not breathe, and continued to lie there as still and as cold as a marble statue.
It had failed. Gabriel wasn’t moving, the heartbeat and magic had stopped, and even though he’d been so careful, the last thing he had to hold on to was gone. He couldn’t feel anything but numbness, staring at his lover’s still form. Now what would he do? What to do with Antonio? What would he do about Gabriel’s killers? He would have to do more than just write to that coven...
Antonio bent his head over his brother’s prone form and squeezed him tight in his arms. Something twitched then. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered if the intensity of emotion had overcome him; he already knew he was trembling. But the twitching came on again, stronger this time, and he felt a tightness in his brother’s frame that hadn’t been there a minute ago. He lifted his head and stared. The tightness travelled from arms, to chest to neck, and Gabriel’s chest suddenly gave a violent heave. The prone body abruptly jerked and a dirty hand grabbed his wrist.
And then Gabriel convulsed, coughing and retching dry air as he wrenched Antonio’s fingers from his mouth and jerked upwards, curled over himself. He coughed once more into his fist and spat blood to the side, where a stained gold piece bounced and rolled to clatter harmlessly amongst the mess on the floor. He was still coughing, and swearing something in a small, cracked voice when Antonio started babbling tearfully and jumped him, causing both brothers to tip over in a heap of arms and legs.
Arthur’s hands were still shaking, but he sagged with relief, dropping his head into his bloodied hands. He silently thanked every god he could think of, particularly his own, and carefully wiped away any tears that may have formed, before they spilled over and he looked like a fool. He was going to say something, but then he remembered that he would have to breath in to do so, and the room was probably wretched with the smell of Gabriel’s blood. Instead, he settled for just enjoying the fact that Gabriel was moving again under his own power, moving and breathing (and coughing and swearing).
A short span of time passed before Gabriel could even find the ability in himself to breathe enough to string a sentence together, and it didn’t help that Antonio had effectively just forgotten everything that had happened in favour of crushing him. He hit his brother weakly in the arm.
“Get up...” he muttered a little derisively and pushed, to no avail, “What’s going on? Where are - ...what happened to the house?” He turned his head on the bloody carpet, raising his eyebrows at the large chunk that had been taken out of the wall and the...rather efficiently decimated staircase. “Antonio, get off.”
His brother’s laugh was a little bit wet, and he wiped his eyes on the back of his hand without preamble. “That was close,” Antonio informed him. “I thought... I thought for sure that - “ He grabbed Gabriel’s face in his hands and shook him back and forth. “Hermano from now on you’re never going to go near anyone with a wand ever again, okay? Never again!”
“What?” Gabriel exclaimed, brows furrowing together. Granted it was a little hard to talk with the grip his brother seemed to have on his face, but he made the effort to shove a hand at him and push him aside. “Who...? What wand?”
“Can we not talk about it right now?” Antonio asked, in a small voice that momentarily surprised Gabriel with its honesty. His brother seemed to finally get the hint and crawled off him, giving Gabriel room to try and move himself into a steady, half-sitting position.
“...Alright,” he relented, “but you’re to tell me everything that’s happened later.”
It didn’t work, so Gabriel slumped on his back instead, wiping sweat from his brow. His skin felt feverishly hot all of a sudden, and clammy in turn. He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “I feel like I just had a major heart attack,” he said aloud to no one in particularly, fingers moving to curl automatically over his chest. He winced as he brushed the skin, tensing, feeling the scar tissue under his palm. “Magic...?”
“Something like that,” Antonio replied reluctantly. “You shouldn’t touch it hermano, it’s still fresh. You have to let it - ”
“You took those coins out of my pocket,” Gabriel said darkly. “That doesn’t sound like a simple ‘something’. You know why we don’t...stop trying to make excuses,” he cut off, as Antonio opened his mouth to protest, “I know you used them, I nearly swallowed one of the damn things.”
“Please,” Antonio said sharply, and glared until his brother relented and the tension drained from his frame, “Please,” he went on, a little less harshly, “You’ve lost a lot of blood. Let’s not do this tonight.” He moved to help Gabriel up, putting an arm around his shoulder to steady him. They sank against each other, heads bent close together. “I don’t want to see you like that ever again.”
“Antonio, I...” Gabriel paused. He looked around the room, as though finally having noticed it for the first time. It was then that his gaze fell upon Arthur, and his expression shifted from mildly annoyed, to guilty. “Oh,” he said shortly, and continued to stare awkwardly. “I didn’t realize...”
Arthur tried to smile at him, though it didn’t really work, covered in Gabriel’s blood as he was not to mention all the dust and grime he’d accumulated from the fight before. He suddenly felt very self conscious about his appearance. He hadn’t really felt that in a long time. He wiped some of the blood off his face with a corner of his shirt that wasn’t completely soaked with the stuff. That done, he readied himself for the smell, and took a breath in.
His first attempt at talking came out more as a gag. His eyes watered from the stench, and he pulled a face. The second try went better. “You should have called ahead first.” he admonished, trying not to breath through his nose.
“Oh,” Gabriel said again and looked even more guilty for that. “I didn’t think you’d be home.” He stopped, and shook his head. “...No that’s not right, of course you’d be home, this is your house and it’s the middle of the night, it makes perfect sense that you’d...”
Antonio elbowed him, raising his eyebrows. Gabriel glared at him out of the corner of his eye, and ran a hand back through his bloody hair again in frustration. “What I meant to say,” he ground out, giving his brother the evil eye, “was, well...I suppose I didn’t think you’d answer.” The silence stretched out between them, deep and unapproachable. Gabriel’s hand tightened against his chest wound. “...but we’re sorry for intruding,” he said at last. “Just look at the state of this place. We’ll clean it up and head out as soon as we’re done, I promise. I think we’ve caused you enough trouble for tonight.” He moved forward, making a shaky attempt to get to his feet. “Antonio, help me up.”
“Hermano...” his brother sighed, looking like he was on the verge of just dropping Gabriel and leaving him to lie in the wreckage until he healed enough to move by himself. He seemed to think better of it though, because he crawled to his feet and bent over again to lift his brother up under his arms.
“You’re not going anywhere.” Arthur said quickly. “The house was in a state before you got here and the damage done to it is mostly my fault. Try not to be such a bloody martyr and get better, alright? You can repay me with that.” It was quite a lot to say while breathing in this heavy a smell, and he swallowed, grimacing slightly. “Bring him through to the sofas in the library, there are a few that- aren’t damaged.” As in, they didn’t have arrows sticking out of them or tears where Arthur had thrown a fit. “... no dying this time, are we clear?”
For all he’d been avoiding Gabriel these past years, this encounter had brought him to a sudden realisation. Hunter or not, he couldn’t stand to lose him.
“It’s really not that bad,” Gabriel tried reassuringly, wobbling a little as he clung to his brother for support. “I’ve seen worse, honestly. You don’t have to - ” He tripped sideways over his own feet, losing his balance.
“Trust me on this one hermano,” Antonio told him, heaving one of Gabriel’s arms over his shoulder as he grabbed him firmly around the waist. “It doesn’t get much worse than this.” They dragged themselves slowly out the gap in the wall where the door had been, moving inch by shuffling inch, as far as Gabriel could go without tipping over or having to pause in order to catch his breath.
“We could get a land line,” his brother was going on, “Call for a car to take us back into town.”
“You were the one who wanted to come here in the first place remember?” Antonio replied, shifting his body weight in order to better drag Gabriel’s, who in his state was little more than dead weight on his arm. They moved through the hallway, and Antonio had to pull his brother away from the shattered dining hall, where he was staring with an increasingly alarmed expression at the giant hole in the back that extended out into the courtyard. “Really,” he muttered in a low voice, “If I’d known you’d go to pieces upon actually seeing him I’d have tied you up back in your room at HQ, for all the good it’s done us.”
They carried along in silence. “Toni...” Gabriel said quietly, as his brother helped him over the fallen banister that had once belonged to the staircase. “...how dead was I exactly?”
“...dead,” Antonio supplied as they finally came to the library. His tone was bitter. “As in I thought you were going to crumble into a six hundred year old pile of cursed dust, dead.”
Gabriel looked away. “...Ah.”
The library was in a disarrayed, cruel state, made even worse by the fact that the destruction that had taken place here had happened many years prior and hadn’t been cleaned up since. Antonio carefully sidestepped shards of broken glass, the piles of old, faded clothes over dust piles and the silvertipped arrows and bullets embedded in the walls. He tried not to think about how Gabriel had come close to that, and instead searched out when of the cleaner, less mangled couches. He found what he was looking for at the far end of the library, in a corner away from the windows; because of this it was more or less untouched. Carefully, he got his hands behind his brother and helped him first sit down, and then lie back. Gabriel sank down gratefully with a sigh and closed his eyes. Antonio found a throw rug in one of the chairs, and wrapped it around his brother to protect him from the chill; when this was taken care of he sat down on the edge of the couch, staring contemplatively at the broken windows.
“What’s it like...?” he asked.
Gabriel shifted around to get comfortable and lay back. He looked tired after having had to make the actual journey on foot. Antonio doubted he would have even made it to the forest, for all he seemed to want to leave Arthur be, now that he realized he was in the house. “What’s what like?”
Antonio looked both wistful and sad in that moment. He leaned back against the arm of the couch and looked at his brother. “You know...” he said, “Actually dying.”
Gabriel thought over this for a long time. He sighed again and looked down at his hands. “Peaceful,” he relayed thoughtfully. “Definitely peaceful. Like you haven’t a care in the world. You feel like you could sleep forever.” He hesitated.
“But...?” his brother prompted. Gabriel rubbed a hand over his face tiredly.
“...but I wasn’t ready to sleep forever,” he admitted. “I wanted to get up, but I couldn’t. It was like trying to swim through an ocean of liquid sugar. Sweet, endless limbo. I’m glad to have got out of it.”
“I’m glad too,” Antonio told him, and grasped his shoulder, “being dead doesn’t suit you at all, hermano. Where would I be without you?”
“Probably in a back alley with the other tomcats,” Gabriel replied without venom. He glanced off into the distance. “Do you think that’s why...” he trailed off. Antonio gave him a questioning look, so he tried again.
“Do you think that’s why Arthur is talking to me again?”
Antonio sighed. “Hermano, I’m not even going to pretend that I understand that guy,” he said with a snort. Gabriel looked dejected.
“Ten years,” he muttered, “Ten years and I might as well not exist to him. So why now?”
“That...I can’t answer,” Antonio replied, and pulled his brother’s blanket up higher. “But for what it’s worth hermano, he would have killed a witch or two for your sake.”
When Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up he scowled. “What?” he demanded. “This doesn’t mean I like him. It’s just... I couldn’t save you without him.”
This gave the hunter pause. “So the blood he’s covered in is... mine?”
Antonio nodded, surprisingly solemn. He cupped a hand to his brother’s forehead. “You’re a little warm,” he said. “So rest up where you can. I’ll see if I can’t find a way to get you upstairs, or at least make you more comfortable.” He got to his feet.
“I doubt it.” Arthur said, appearing in the doorway and looking extremely wet. He had his shirt, completely ruined with blood, in hand. He didn’t seem to even notice the cold. “I fear I may have ruined the stairs irreparably. I suppose I could carry you up there myself while I walk along the walls.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Gabriel said weakly, pushing himself up as he tried to glance over his shoulder without rolling off the couch entirely. “It’s no trouble - ”
“He can barely walk,” Antonio cut across, frowning in disapproval at the very idea as he firmly pushed Gabriel back down by the shoulder, “And now you want to climb the wall? He’ll fall off and break his neck and we’d have to go through the entire ordeal all over again!”
“Let’s not jump to extremes,” Gabriel ground out, glaring at him.
Arthur looked annoyed. “Fine, if you’ve decided not to trust me now, after I replaced his bloody heart, I’ll let you stay down here instead. But I’m going to get you better blankets.” he wrinkled his nose, glancing at his ruined shirt before throwing it at the fireplace. “And some new clothes.”
Gabriel looked sharply in Antonio’s direction. “He replaced my what?” he demanded incredulously.
“Nothing!” his brother replied a little too quickly, “It’s nothing hermano, you’re delirious, hearing things... ahaha,” he patted Gabriel on the forehead somewhat jerkily before he scowled in Arthur’s direction. “And for your information,” he told the vampire irritably, “It’s got nothing to do with whether I trust you or not. I’m worried more about him,” he pushed Gabriel down again, much to his increasing annoyance, “not being able to hold on more than I am about you doing impersonations of a spider. But of course if you want to make this about you...”
“I’m right here you know,” Gabriel said aloud, and swatted Antonio’s hand away from his person, though the effort was somewhat weak in and of itself, “and I’m not a newborn. I can take care of myself perfectly well.”
“You were taking care of yourself so well when that killing curse hit you.” Arthur muttered, mostly to himself, lighting a fire in the hearth and watching the clothes burn. “And just as well when the imperious curse...” he glared at the flames, mouth twisting into a snarl. “This will not be the last they hear of me. I am going to be severe with those two.” Contemplating the various ways he could remove their internal organs from them was the only thing keeping him from punching the wall. He glanced over at Antonio. “And if you don’t tell him what happened, I will. Either way, I’ll be back in a moment.” And he stalked out of the library.
As he left, Gabriel fixed Antonio with a glare so piercing that it made him want to start shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot. “What is he talking about? Is this about that witch you mentioned?”
His brother sighed heavily, sitting down on the floor. He leaned back against the couch and would not look at Gabriel. “We were careless hermano,” he said quietly, “that’s all it was. And it’s witches; plural. You remember how we were walking through the woods and there was a green light at the front gate?”
Gabriel rubbed at the side of his head with his hand. “I don’t know,” he said honestly, and closed his eyes contemplatively. “It’s still a little fuzzy. There was a flash, and I remember blacking out...”
“That was the first time you died tonight,” Antonio told him. Gabriel’s frown deepened.
“...but I woke up,” he said. “And I remember seeing a face,” he trailed off. “A young man I’d never met before. It was only for a moment though. After that it wasn’t so much unconsciousness as it was a deep, unfathomable darkness.” He looked up. “So that was a...?”
Antonio shrugged helplessly. Gabriel scowled. “Witches,” he snarled, “and those damn killing curses. It’s like being hit by a truck every single time, I swear...” His heart gave a sudden sharp twinge. The hunter hunched over himself, hissing in pain.
“I swear...” he began again, sweat dripping down his chin as he dug his nails against his skin out of the need to just squeeze something, “...I don’t remember it ever hurting this much before,” he amended, and shooed his brother away when he turned around and began hovering nervously. “It wasn’t just the killing curse was it? Killing curses don’t draw blood, and I...” he looked down at himself, at the wounds and the stains, “...I am veritably covered in it.”
Antonio shook his head wordlessly. The memory seemed to render him speechless. “It wasn’t...” he said at last, “You’re right, it wasn’t but hermano... I can’t tell you, at least not right now, it’s...”
“It’s what?” Gabriel wanted to know. “What was so bad that you had to use those coins and then willingly collaborated with Arthur?”
“Still too much of a coward to say it then, cat?” Arthur said, coming back into the room with an arm-full of blankets and clothes for both himself and Gabriel. He’d neglected to bring any for Antonio. “Typical.” Their temporary alliance to keep Gabriel alive was fast disappearing. “I’ll say it then.” He set the pile down on a less damaged sofa. “You stood in front of me and, under the Imperious Curse, ripped your own heart out.” He jabbed a thumb in Antonio’s direction. “They used crucio on him. And that, Gab, is why you need to start warning me first.”
Gabriel was silent, and stared at him for a long moment. Antonio put his face in his hands and groaned to himself. At the same time, he would have to find a way to get back at Arthur in future; what had been the point of everything they had just accomplished if in the end he ended up looking like the bad guy?
“I ...didn’t think that was....” Possible Gabriel wanted to say, but then it was hard to rule out improbable things in their line of work. His breathing had quickened a little at the thought of having a vital organ so out of place from his body. “What does that even mean?”
“Hermano don’t dig your fingers in like that,” Antonio told him, and moved to pry his brother’s hand away from his chest, where his nails had already started to draw reddened welts, “you just finished to heal, the skin is tender and we don’t want to break - ”
“There is no conceivable reason why anyone would use magic for that kind of display,” his brother snapped, moving further up on the couch to put some more distance between them. “That’s just too morbid. What did they know?”
“Know...?” Antonio repeated blankly, sitting back down again. He looked confused.
“They knew something,” his brother insisted. “How does my gutting myself open benefit anyone, let alone a vampire? You’ve heard how awful we apparently taste,” he turned his gaze back to Arthur, as though all the answers would materialize there if he only stared them down hard enough. “Arthur what did you tell them?” he whispered, not even addressing the flat statement that he should have called first.
For one thing Arthur was not a fan of the telephone, and he barely had the electricity to keep one functional. Would he have answered had he known it was Gabriel on the other end? The way things had been between them recently, the answer was clearly no. He couldn’t see how that might have changed any of what had happened, despite Arthur’s claims to the contrary.
Now it was Arthur’s turn to look uncomfortable. “... you’re aware I’ve not been in the most approachable mood recently.” There was the understatement of the century. “Alice, one of the witches that attacked you, has been a good friend to me during that time. I may... may have confided one or two personal problems in her. Though I’ve recently come to terms that it wasn’t you that k.... killed them, I’ve not relayed that to her.” He was deliberately avoiding eye contact with Gabriel, but he could feel Antonio glaring at him. “I suppose she thought of it as vengeance on my behalf, though you’ve hardly helped yourself by imprisoning and killing several of her friends and relatives.”
“So you could say that this was all your fault,” Antonio said, glowering furiously. “Why you - ”
Gabriel covered his mouth rather deliberately with one of the cushions that had been resting behind his head. “As far as I’m concerned we’re not discriminating between them,” he replied coolly, “A witch is a witch and the only good kind is a dead witch. But that’s not the point,” he went on, the ruthless hunter exterior falling away, “Given my line of work I expect to die, and a lot of the time, I actually have. But this is the first time I think I might have died and disappeared, with the looming possibility of forever. The question is why didn’t you let them? I think it’s safe to say our agreement has been pretty much null and void for the past ten years don’t you?”
He was still staring at Arthur, curious and unblinking. “You replaced my heart.” It wasn’t a question.
“It was sitting quite neatly on an actual silver platter. Which I might have to throw out now.” The mental image wasn’t going to go away. He was avoiding the actual question at hand, however, still not looking at Gabriel. “... I... look, you...” several false starts later, he sighed, putting a hand up to his head. “Can you make your brother leave before I say this? He’s starting to chew through the pillow.”
It didn’t take long for Gabriel to think this over. “Antonio,” he said, pulling the cushion off his brother at last so he could gasp for air and try to point Arthur out as the guilty party at the same time. Gabriel placed his hand between his brother’s shoulders. “I need you to leave me with Arthur for a little while. Alone.”
The way Antonio was looking at him with such wide-eyed incredulity, you would think that Gabriel had just asked him to hurl himself off a cliff. “I won’t be long,” he insisted. “Please. Do it for me.”
Antonio searched his brother’s face suspiciously before relenting. “Alright,” he grumbled, “but the moment he starts agitating your condition I am getting you out out here and we’ll head back to town.” He squeezed Gabriel’s knee affectionately as he drew himself to his feet. “I’ll be watching you,” he warned Arthur, “don’t think I won’t know what you’re up to if you make hermano upset.”
“See if you can’t find a way for us to get upstairs without having to scale a wall while you’re at it,” Gabriel called out to him as his brother left at a deliberately slow-paced walk, glancing over his shoulder every now and again as if he could catch a glimpse of their conversation if he lingered long enough. Eventually though he disappeared around the corner, though he did not look too happy for having to do so. Gabriel could hear his footsteps fading down the hallway.
He raised his eyebrow at Arthur expectantly.
The vampire was watching Antonio leave, purposefully waiting until he was out of ear shot. He turned back to Gabriel, took a deep breath, and finally blurted. “Nobody is allowed to kill you but me.” He held up a hand. “And before you comment on how morbid that is, and how I’m going back on things I said before, I want you to know that I really wasn’t myself at that time. I’m still... grieving, I suppose, and I lashed out at you and anyone. I’ve got a while to go, but I’ve decided that, since you’re one of the few people who I can actually tolerate for an extended period of time, there’s no gain from alienating you further.” He sat on one of the many chairs, and it creaked, old and worn. “... since you came here of your own accord - warn me, damnit - I’m going to assume you don’t hate me yet. So, um...” a red hue rose in his cheeks. “What I’m trying to say is... sorry, I suppose... for everything.”
“...always nice to know you’re tolerated, I suppose,” Gabriel said dryly. He looked away, and focused on the ceiling instead. “You have every right to be angry though,” he went on quietly, “Anyone else in my position would have seen the signs for what they were long ago, run away and hope that you would never find me. I know for a fact that Antonio sees them, I’ve just been choosing not to for the better part of a decade. If anyone should apologize, it’s me. I suppose,” he traced the scar over his chest with careful fingers, “what I want to apologize for is that I couldn’t be what you wanted me to be. For a while it seemed as though we could put that behind us, but you can’t really change those things, and I realize that now.” He glanced at Arthur out of the corner of his eye.
“I promise I would have called ahead, if I’d thought for a moment that you’d still want to talk to me. It’s okay if you don’t, you know. You don’t have to try for my sake just because I’m a little...” he winced suddenly and drew his hand off his chest again, “...delicate right now,” he grit out and took a long, fortifying breath.
“I’m not just doing this for your sake. It’s for my own sake as well, if you must know.” he folded his arms. “Being a useless recluse for the rest of my miserable un-life is not something I aspire to. And as much as I would love for you to give up being a Hunter, you and I know that would be too much to ask.” after a pause, he cleared his throat. “Moreover, ‘delicate’ is more a word I would use with humans that don’t get up again after having a vital organ ripped from them.” Two large eyebrows met in the middle to frown impressively. “Precisely which god did you happen to annoy so thoroughly in your travels?”
“If it wouldn’t close so many doors available to us, I’d give it up for you in a heartbeat,” Gabriel muttered, seemed to realize what he had just said and smiled a little, the corners of his mouth turning up slightly. He looked contemplatively at his hands. “There is only one true God, you know that. The rest pale in comparison.” It was a poor attempt at masking the truth, but Gabriel took it anyway.
Arthur didn’t look so convinced. “Alright, which high ranking demon or otherwise quasi-omnipotent higher supernatural being did you piss off?”
“I wasn’t aware you were so well-versed in ancient Mesoamerican deities,” Gabriel said almost to himself, noted that Arthur didn’t look like he would let up anytime soon and gave in. There was a certain disadvantage to not being able to get up and walk away from a conversation. He covered his eyes with his forearm and grimaced. “Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so angry if it didn’t try to eat us in the first place. But I suppose that’s the way it is in the underworld. I couldn’t go near any bats for years upon years, but you probably already knew that part.” He lifted his arm a little to peer at Arthur from beneath it. “Sound familiar, I wonder?”
Arthur’s mouth dropped open, speechless. He closed it again, and shook his head. “You cannot possibly mean who I think you mean. That’s- for one thing that’s blasphemous- to me at least- and you would never survive- why would he do...” he bit his hand to stop himself from jabbering senselessly. Still, he stared at Gabriel like the man had just grown a second head. After a long moment, he spoke again. “That would be why the magic on you was familiar...”
Gabriel pursed his lips. “I’ll take that to mean you saw the gold,” he said shortly. “I’ve kept those coins close to me for the entirety of our wretched existence as a reminder. The ancient idols of the New World imbued them with much power, and an old deep magic.” He pulled one of the crudely crafted coins from his pocket and held it up in the firelight. “A magic that will not cease to exist, no matter how much gold we melt down, or pieces we strike. It is a curse founded in greed.” He tossed the coin in Arthur’s direction; it glinted hypnotically as it spun. The vampire caught it, staring at the imprints and designs on it with awe.
“But Camazotz is not interested in gold, or wealth.” Gabriel continued. There was a certain darkness to his voice now, the bitterness replaced with loathing. “He is only interested in blood and sacrifice. Don’t misunderstand,” he added, when he noticed the vampire was doing a pretty good impression of a fish out of water, “I’ve not seen that smooth-talking parasite in over five hundred years.” There was a brazen cruelty to his smile that Arthur usually did not see; it was an anger that went deep, far deeper than Gabriel cared to touch. “Rest assured if I had, his head would have been mounted and stuffed in the Vatican crypts long ago.”
“Insolence!” Arthur suddenly burst forth with, then reigned himself in. He was more shocked than angry, particularly in the fact of Gabriel’s own seething rage. He took a deep breath to steady himself. “You’ll pardon me if I am a little insulted by your descriptions of Lord Camazotz. He is somewhat of a vampire deity.” His eyes fell on the gold coin in his hand. Arthur liked gold; he had accumulated a lot of material wealth over the centuries. Dead men had no use for money, after all, and Arthur was the maker of a lot of dead men. But this coin... “If you did indeed steal from Camazotz,” and he couldn’t sound more incredulous at the idea, “I’m not sure whether to be impressed or appalled.”
His fingers traced the patterns gently, nearly lovingly. “He saw fit to curse you rather than kill you,” he mused to himself. “Either you made him so angry that he decreed you would suffer for all eternity, or... he had some kind of greater plan.” A wry sort of smile appeared. “After all, had you not been immortal, we never would have met.” The smile vanished. “You brother would also be on his own.”
Gabriel seemed to muse quietly over this. “Heaven forbid anyone would leave Antonio to wander around by himself, especially with his unfortunate...condition. If I weren’t here I’d probably have been rolling in my grave wondering what scrapes he’d have got into.” He closed his eyes. “I’d always wanted a career on the sea, to discover the world, perhaps settle down and marry a nobleman’s daughter and have children in the distant future...though it’s five hundred years too late for that now. Far be it from me to guess at the mind games of a twisted, blood sucking mammal.” The distaste in his voice made it plain just what he thought of Camazotz’s godhood.
“We stole gold from a number of places,” he admitted dryly, “Call it the hot blooded passion of youth in possession of sharp objects and muskets, but Camazotz was the only one who came to collect his dues. Personally I feel he was just disappointed that he missed out on the chance to acquire our heads for sport.” He turned his head. “You may keep that coin if you wish,” he offered. “I don’t mind so much if you want to hold on to it, so long as you don’t sell it. You have no idea how troublesome it is to get them out of people’s hands these days.”
“Sell it? I wouldn’t let go of it for all the gold in England!” Arthur exclaimed, closing his hand around the precious coin, before realising how he sounded. “... this is practically a holy relic to me, you realise. But are you sure? It seemed pretty important to the ritual that kept you alive, back there...”
“I’ll be having nightmares about that for months,” Gabriel muttered, mostly to himself. He made an attempt at sitting up a little, chest heaving shallowly. He felt run over, as though his heart would pop out of place if he so much as breathed wrong. In the end all he managed was to slump awkwardly over the armrest, sweat sticking his curls against his forehead. He pushed them away in annoyance before his expression softened.
“I want you to have it,” he insisted. “It’s not the one coin that works the magic, but the strength of the person calling on it. Don’t look at me like that,” he said when Arthur gave him a contemptuous look, “I know he may not look it but Antonio is perfectly capable. Think of it as keeping a piece of me with you. Ah...” he paused suddenly, as if remembering something unpleasant, “...I mean, if you want to that is. Given all that’s happened I suppose we’re not, well... you know.” He gestured somewhat weakly between them with a fingertip. “But that’s more than understandable. I suppose it works just as well as a token of friendship.”
Arthur didn’t really know what to say to that. He’d never exactly made it a habit to declare his love from the rooftops, and now he couldn’t be sure if Gabriel had just effectively broken off their relationship or if he was implying that it would be better for all parties if they had. He certainly wasn’t acting as though they were together anymore, but he supposed that that was more or less fault on his part. Given his own behaviour these past ten years or so, he’d have been surprised had Gabriel formed an impression to the contrary. He clenched the coin in his fist and silently worked his jaw.
“Um... I don’t... intend to end our relations, Gab.” he said tentatively, watching the other man’s reactions just in case he put his foot in his mouth. “Unless you want to, which I can also understand because, well, what just happened wasn’t particularly pleasant and I’m not the easiest to get along with anymore and I’m probably going to go back to being a miserable shut in after this for another few years until I decide to face people again-” he stopped himself babbling, pursing his lips and looking down at the coin. “... while this is an invaluable trinket to give me, I’d... much rather have your company.” He was blushing, he could feel it, the sudden rush of blood in his ears as his heart restarted, remembering reactions to emotions his body had had when he was alive.
“If they haven’t ended already,” Gabriel said a little bitterly. “But I’ve invested quite a bit of my immortal life in this relationship and I don’t intend to break it for anything. You don’t honestly think I keep coming back here for the scenery do you?” he inquired bluntly and pushed himself up into an upright position. His skin was glistening with feverish sweat. “I’ll stay for as long as you’ll have me. It’s not...well. It’s not good for you to be here alone by yourself.”
Arthur let a small smile appear. “Well you’re not going anywhere like this. I’m afraid you’ll simply have to stay.” he concluded. He picked up a blanket and used the corner to dab some of the sweat off Gabriel’s forehead. “I did not just fight off two witches for nothing. Maybe I should make Antonio get you some towels as well...” he pressed a cold hand against hot skin, frowning at the intensity of the difference. It had happened before, but it was worrying none the less.
“It will pass,” the hunter replied; the clearness in his eyes was fading now, slowly being replaced by the foggy sensation of fever. He was shivering imperceptibly as his body worked to get over the trauma it had just been through. Moving carefully, he hunched up small under the blanket; the roaring fireplace was creating a warm, heady atmosphere that was making his mind blank and fuzzy. “...but then again I’ve never had a vital organ pulled out of my body, so it’s difficult to say how long that will actually take. Silly little thing, the heart, don’t you think?” He sighed and turned his face into Arthur’s palm, lips against the pulse point on his wrist, which would have been well and good had he a pulse to begin with. “Lose it and the whole world might as well come crashing down after you with a vengeance.”
“Hence why this is not going to happen in future.” Arthur sighed, gently stroking his thumb across Gabriel’s cheek. It was always difficult to see Gabriel weakened like this. Any other person would never believe this was the same man that was used in bed time stories to scare little vampire and werewolf pups. Arthur should feel privileged, but instead he was just worried. Pointless, since Gabriel would survive this, but still. “You should probably get some rest, Gab. I’ll try and think of a way to get upstairs later...” or he could bring the bed down here, but it would be difficult, to get it through the doorway.
Gabriel closed his eyes. It wasn’t too hard to want to sleep; his face, let alone his entire body, felt as though it had been carved out of lead, heavy and too difficult to keep still for much longer. The tension in his shoulders seemed to relax a little and for a moment his haggard features looked softer, younger almost. But then he blinked, eyes desperate to stay open, though only visible through the barest of slits, and the expression and vulnerability was gone. “I’d rather it didn’t,” he murmured, and seemed to sag deeper into the couch cushions. “Happen again, that is,” he clarified somewhat thickly. He closed his eyes again; adrift somewhere between semi-consciousness and blacking out. “Nasty business...” His breathing evened out, becoming slow and ending on a sigh, “...coming back from the dead.” He was out cold within the minute, exhaustion finally taking its toll.
Arthur watched him for a little while, then sighed to himself, leaning back in his chair. He was pretty spent too, having two fights during one night, not to mention every other stress that had come his way. Green eyes tracked the rise and fall of Gabriel’s chest, making sure it kept an even rhythm, mostly to reassure himself. This whole incident had made him face a few facts. Even though his coven was gone, he shouldn’t just shut himself away forever. And even if he had no family, at least he had a few things left for him to cherish, however quietly.
And lastly... if he hadn’t needed to renovate the house before, he certainly did now.
-
-
-
[End]
A/N:
Belgium = Alice [a witch]
Netherlands = Lars [a warlock]
Portugal = Gabriel [a hunter]
Spain [also a hunter]
England [a vampire]
If you want to read hellzabeth's original fanfic that spawned this universe, you can find it all monster_au here.
Spells and the like shamelessly ganked from the Harry Potter universe. As if this AU wasn't a hodge-podge already. |D;
Though I feel it has to be said that this entire fic on its lonesome is about half the size of that (which is 13 chapters long). And this is why we should never be allowed to collaborate ever. |D;
Authors: hellzabeth & candesceres
Characters/Pairings: England, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Portugal(OC) (with guest appearances by Grindelwald and Dumbledore)
Rating: R
Warning: (monster_au) Language, blood and gore, violence, graphic descriptions, witches and warlocks and vampires, oh my
Summary: The year is 1945. In the European theater, the Great Wizarding War is at its peak. The monster hunters, as agents of the Vatican, are working overtime. But where do you draw the line between monster and man?
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The vampire ground his teeth, before letting loose a frustrated yell and kicking an unfortunate nearby tree, which with a groan and a crash, fell to the ground. He stared at it, still angry, before turning on his heel and stalking back towards the house. Traitor. What would they know about traitors. He’d done nothing to betray anyone, never told Gabriel anything of that manner and vice versa. That was their agreement; not to bring that kind of thing into their relationship, as much as they could.
He was still fuming when he entered the front door of his house, gazing at the destruction. Great, just what he needed, more of a mess to add to what there had been before. He couldn’t be bothered with it before, but this was getting frankly ridiculous. He would have to get this fixed. All of it. Eventually.
Right now though, right now there was something he had to take care of.
The scent of the hunter’s blood still permeated the ruined hallway, snaking around the corners like an unpleasant reminder as he made his way through the rubble back to his study. There was a faint green glow emanating from the open doorway but this one was different to the Killing Curse. It was... softer somewhat. Ancient. Old.
Antonio was right where he had left him, crouched over with his brother’s head on his knees. The pouch Arthur had seen him grasping just now was strewn to the side, spilling its contents across the bloody carpet. He caught a flash of gold. The green light on the other hand, was coming from Gabriel’s corpse. Thick green lines were spreading out from the cavity in his chest, like many glowing, patterned veins. They crisscrossed over his skin, drawing cracks through the congealing blood, spidery lines weaving their way up and around Antonio’s arms as they lay across his brother’s chest. Arthur could not get a good look at what was going on from where he was standing, but his own chest felt tight just by watching the scene unfold that he could not bring himself to go any closer.
Antonio was muttering to himself, low, heartfelt words; his forehead pressed against Gabriel’s own. Two fingers of one hand were pressed against his brother’s closed eyelids, the middle two, he was surprised to see, had forced their way into Gabriel’s slack mouth. He appeared to be holding something in place there. The muttering grew more urgent, and Arthur caught that glint of gold again, this time across Gabriel’s face. Antonio’s fist was clenched over the space where his brother’s heart had used to be, bloodied and grasping something in a white-knuckled fist. The green, spidery lines of old magic centred here. He was trembling.
Gabriel’s heart skipped a beat, and rather literally to boot. It was in morbid fascination that he watched the disconnected muscle contract and relax. It was slow, almost imperceptible and Arthur didn’t dare blink in case it happened to be a trick of the light. But the heart was beating, barely, magic spiralling across his desk and sliding over the silver tray to cradle it in an incorporeal green mesh. It was surreal, to see the heart beating wherein the body could not even move to breathe.
So this was it. This was Gabriel’s curse in it’s fully functioning, macabre glory. Arthur wasn’t one to be easily disgusted by gore (occupational perk), rather, he was fascinated. Powerful, deep and ancient magics could be the only things at work here. He felt slightly humbled to be watching such a thing, which is saying something, vampires being noted for their pride above all else. There was something oddly familiar about this green power, this energy that tied Gabriel to the mortal world whether he liked it or not, but Arthur couldn’t put his finger on it.
To whatever being this power belonged, it seemed awfully intent on keeping Gabriel alive, no matter how much he suffered. Even a vampire would find it difficult, nigh on impossible to recover from an injury like this.
He cleared his throat carefully. “What is this?” he asked, a vague enough question that it could be answered any way needed.
Antonio turned his head. His eyes were greener than his brother’s, but in this moment they were not only green, but glowing, magic rippling through the very core of his being. Considering the side they fought for, and the personal vendetta both brothers had against witchcraft, it was almost ironic. The light faded a little as he stopped muttering, fixing Arthur with an unblinking gaze. The heart stopped beating.
“This is the only way I can think of to keep my brother alive,” he said in a voice that sounded faraway, not quite all there. He lifted his head, smoothing Gabriel’s hair back from his forehead. Arthur could not see his eyes then, for they were hidden, eyelids weighted shut by the placement of two intricately carved gold coins. It was from these pieces of gold that the ancient magic radiated the strongest, and judging from the position of Antonio’s hands, Arthur could guess that another such coin was currently being held in place in Gabriel’s mouth.
“The eyes and the mouth are the biggest channels to the soul,” he went on, at Arthur’s questioning look. “All magic comes from a gaze, thoughts, words. So it is from these points on the body that the magic must enter again. Hermano’s soul is safe.” His eyes flickered to the heart on its silver tray. “All that’s left is putting the heart back where it belongs.”
Arthur hesitated. “So you mean,” he began carefully, “He’s not...”
“He’s dead,” Antonio replied, with so much feeling in those words alone that it ached. He bent over and pulled his brother closer. “I’ll be honest with you, he has never been more dead than he is now. And why shouldn’t he be? Regenerating cells,” when Arthur glanced at him again he had to double-take, for there seemed to be more lines on Antonio’s face than there had been previously, “at the cost of one’s life force, that is easy enough.” He shook his head, and the hair greying at his temples disappeared; he was back to the age he seemed to permanently maintain. “But no one can live without a heart. I’m surprised your witchy friends didn’t try to take it with them actually...” he trailed off thoughtfully. “...we’d have been in real trouble then.”
“I wouldn’t have allowed it.” Arthur said quickly. “Gabriel’s heart is...” mine is what he wanted to say, but he realised how silly that sounded. For one thing, he meant metaphorically, and this was very much in the physical sense. For another, Antonio might take it to mean that he had suddenly acquired a taste for Gabriel’s cursed, quite foul tasting blood. “... either way, it should go back inside him. The longer it stays out here, the more the smell is going to permeate the house.” He said, disguising his real need to see Gabriel just open his eyes and look at him again. Death did not become him, not like this.
“The smell is the least of our worries,” Antonio said darkly, and looked up. Already the blood that had the heart had been lying in had dried and crumbled into a fine red dust. Where the green magic receded tiny cracks began to zigzag across Gabriel’s skin, dust coating his palms and fingertips. Antonio only wiped away as much as he dared, shifting himself carefully so he wouldn’t jostle the body. “We’re running out of time.” He ducked his head again as his brother’s flesh thinned and started drying out; muscles weakening, bone beginning to show through. “Out-of-body experiences were never part of the curse.” There was a grim sort of turn to his mouth now. “Six hundred years and age has caught up to you at last, hermano...”
He placed his hands back over his brother’s sunken-in eyes, against his mouth. The old coins began to spark with magic again. “...let’s not allow it to get the best of us okay?” The green glow began to spread again, pushing back the brink of decay. He didn’t look at Arthur again, closing his eyes. “I don’t like you,” he said bluntly to the open air, “And I’d gladly go the next thousand years without ever asking a favour of you, but if you care for my brother half as much as he seems to care for you, I’ll need your help.”
The magic began to crawl up his arms again, and Antonio grit his teeth against it, taking slow, measured breaths as he forced it down to the points where it was needed. “I need you to hold his heart,” he jerked his head in the direction of the desk, “and don’t drop it mind, or I’ll nail you to a tree.” He curled over his brother, “I can’t risk moving him now without breaking anything, and I’d take it myself it I didn’t have to keep the magic flowing inside him. We only have one shot at this, so don’t ruin the chance.”
He was silent for a longer minute still, as though contemplating whether he really wanted to go through with this or not, especially with Arthur of all people, but in the end his concern for Gabriel won out. “I don’t know if the cavity is big enough to just squeeze it back in,” he grated out at last, “so I need you to find a way to cut him open so we can at least put his heart back roughly where it should be. It’s a bit of a reverse from what your kind are used to, but you should be pretty good at that, being a vampire and all.” The jab fell flat even on his own ears; Arthur noted that even his smirk seemed weak and halfhearted.
“If all goes well,” Antonio chuckled without his usual sunny sense of humor, “and that’s a pretty big if, once it’s back where it belongs the curse will have no problem recognizing that everything is where it should be and start the healing process on its own.” He hung his head.
“...that’s just a theory though,” he admitted in a low voice, “We... I’ve never had to do this before. If it doesn’t work, hermano, he’ll...Well.” He glanced at Arthur with magic glowing in his eyes, and tears rolling down his cheeks. “...I think you’ll know why.”
Arthur looked from Gabriel’s prone form, to the pulsating heart on the platter. Steeling himself, he tried to think of it as just another heart, just like usual, only backwards. Carefully, like handling a newborn, he picked the heart up, holding it with both hands just in case. He was very aware how delicate he would have to be with this, what with the trauma it had already gone through. He knelt down next to Gabriel, eyeing the open wound. He’d have to open it up further just to get the heart back in place properly. He knew the biology of a human body well enough to put the heart back where it needed to go, but the smell was making him gag a little. As such, he stopped his own breathing, expelling all air in a sudden sigh, and didn’t draw it back in.
His nails were more than enough to cut flesh, as demonstrated earlier that night, but it didn’t make him feel any better about it. The green magic that flowed across and through Gabriel tingled on his hands, hot and cold at the same time, and he suddenly felt like an insignificant insect. Gabriel’s curse had been laid upon him by an Aztec god, but the Hunter had always neglected to mention which one. If this worked, Arthur was definitely going to have to ask him. This familiarity... it couldn’t be...
No time to dwell on that. Now the opening was wide enough, Arthur cautiously felt his way inside. Cold. Gab was already going cold, and when he’d been so used to the man exuding heat every time he’d touched him, it was a disturbing feeling. There was a lot of damage from where the heart had been pulled out in the first place, but the green magic was inside as well, tracing patterns across organs. Finding the empty space where the heart should have sat, Arthur pursed his lips, and replaced the beating organ where it was meant to go. He turned it a few times to get it aligned with the severed arteries, and then removed his hand.
It was a good thing he did, because the green energy pulsed, like it was rejecting him, pushing him away with a sense of foreboding.
A heartbeat sounded in his ears, deep and rattling. The green light intensified, lining the wound with a sharp glow that moved, rippling across the marks that lined Gabriel’s entire body. The magic had found its sticking point and revelled in it, forming a spiral over the chest area that wound itself around and tapered off, skin knitting together and repairing itself wherever the light faded, and it was fading fast. The sound of a heartbeat came sluggishly, but as the magic seeped away it came on stronger, slow at first, before expanding, growing steadier. The light followed the incision Arthur had made in Gabriel’s chest, and where it disappeared white scar tissue remained. At last it split from the centre, dancing across from the wound, which had since formed a great knotted scar, white and tender against otherwise tanned skin. The light began to fade faster now, as though it were being erased line by line through the work of an invisible hand, taking the dust and the cracks and melding seamlessly under skin as though they had never been.
Antonio was murmuring faster now, clenching his sweaty palms together as he hunched over Gabriel, until at last the light retreated, crawling slowly up his brother’s face and into his mouth, through his nose and ears and bleeding into his eyes. There was a flash of gold as the green light sank into these and for a moment Arthur thought he could see its faint glow travel down Gabriel’s throat and out of sight, but then he blinked, and the moment had passed. Antonio stopped whatever words he had been pleading, perhaps praying, and the force of magic faded from the room entirely.
The sound of a heartbeat in Arthur’s ears abruptly stopped, and a hushed, uncomfortable silence fell upon them. Antonio glanced up and caught his eye; he seemed to be at a loss, for Gabriel did not move, did not breathe, and continued to lie there as still and as cold as a marble statue.
It had failed. Gabriel wasn’t moving, the heartbeat and magic had stopped, and even though he’d been so careful, the last thing he had to hold on to was gone. He couldn’t feel anything but numbness, staring at his lover’s still form. Now what would he do? What to do with Antonio? What would he do about Gabriel’s killers? He would have to do more than just write to that coven...
Antonio bent his head over his brother’s prone form and squeezed him tight in his arms. Something twitched then. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered if the intensity of emotion had overcome him; he already knew he was trembling. But the twitching came on again, stronger this time, and he felt a tightness in his brother’s frame that hadn’t been there a minute ago. He lifted his head and stared. The tightness travelled from arms, to chest to neck, and Gabriel’s chest suddenly gave a violent heave. The prone body abruptly jerked and a dirty hand grabbed his wrist.
And then Gabriel convulsed, coughing and retching dry air as he wrenched Antonio’s fingers from his mouth and jerked upwards, curled over himself. He coughed once more into his fist and spat blood to the side, where a stained gold piece bounced and rolled to clatter harmlessly amongst the mess on the floor. He was still coughing, and swearing something in a small, cracked voice when Antonio started babbling tearfully and jumped him, causing both brothers to tip over in a heap of arms and legs.
Arthur’s hands were still shaking, but he sagged with relief, dropping his head into his bloodied hands. He silently thanked every god he could think of, particularly his own, and carefully wiped away any tears that may have formed, before they spilled over and he looked like a fool. He was going to say something, but then he remembered that he would have to breath in to do so, and the room was probably wretched with the smell of Gabriel’s blood. Instead, he settled for just enjoying the fact that Gabriel was moving again under his own power, moving and breathing (and coughing and swearing).
A short span of time passed before Gabriel could even find the ability in himself to breathe enough to string a sentence together, and it didn’t help that Antonio had effectively just forgotten everything that had happened in favour of crushing him. He hit his brother weakly in the arm.
“Get up...” he muttered a little derisively and pushed, to no avail, “What’s going on? Where are - ...what happened to the house?” He turned his head on the bloody carpet, raising his eyebrows at the large chunk that had been taken out of the wall and the...rather efficiently decimated staircase. “Antonio, get off.”
His brother’s laugh was a little bit wet, and he wiped his eyes on the back of his hand without preamble. “That was close,” Antonio informed him. “I thought... I thought for sure that - “ He grabbed Gabriel’s face in his hands and shook him back and forth. “Hermano from now on you’re never going to go near anyone with a wand ever again, okay? Never again!”
“What?” Gabriel exclaimed, brows furrowing together. Granted it was a little hard to talk with the grip his brother seemed to have on his face, but he made the effort to shove a hand at him and push him aside. “Who...? What wand?”
“Can we not talk about it right now?” Antonio asked, in a small voice that momentarily surprised Gabriel with its honesty. His brother seemed to finally get the hint and crawled off him, giving Gabriel room to try and move himself into a steady, half-sitting position.
“...Alright,” he relented, “but you’re to tell me everything that’s happened later.”
It didn’t work, so Gabriel slumped on his back instead, wiping sweat from his brow. His skin felt feverishly hot all of a sudden, and clammy in turn. He pushed his hair out of his eyes. “I feel like I just had a major heart attack,” he said aloud to no one in particularly, fingers moving to curl automatically over his chest. He winced as he brushed the skin, tensing, feeling the scar tissue under his palm. “Magic...?”
“Something like that,” Antonio replied reluctantly. “You shouldn’t touch it hermano, it’s still fresh. You have to let it - ”
“You took those coins out of my pocket,” Gabriel said darkly. “That doesn’t sound like a simple ‘something’. You know why we don’t...stop trying to make excuses,” he cut off, as Antonio opened his mouth to protest, “I know you used them, I nearly swallowed one of the damn things.”
“Please,” Antonio said sharply, and glared until his brother relented and the tension drained from his frame, “Please,” he went on, a little less harshly, “You’ve lost a lot of blood. Let’s not do this tonight.” He moved to help Gabriel up, putting an arm around his shoulder to steady him. They sank against each other, heads bent close together. “I don’t want to see you like that ever again.”
“Antonio, I...” Gabriel paused. He looked around the room, as though finally having noticed it for the first time. It was then that his gaze fell upon Arthur, and his expression shifted from mildly annoyed, to guilty. “Oh,” he said shortly, and continued to stare awkwardly. “I didn’t realize...”
Arthur tried to smile at him, though it didn’t really work, covered in Gabriel’s blood as he was not to mention all the dust and grime he’d accumulated from the fight before. He suddenly felt very self conscious about his appearance. He hadn’t really felt that in a long time. He wiped some of the blood off his face with a corner of his shirt that wasn’t completely soaked with the stuff. That done, he readied himself for the smell, and took a breath in.
His first attempt at talking came out more as a gag. His eyes watered from the stench, and he pulled a face. The second try went better. “You should have called ahead first.” he admonished, trying not to breath through his nose.
“Oh,” Gabriel said again and looked even more guilty for that. “I didn’t think you’d be home.” He stopped, and shook his head. “...No that’s not right, of course you’d be home, this is your house and it’s the middle of the night, it makes perfect sense that you’d...”
Antonio elbowed him, raising his eyebrows. Gabriel glared at him out of the corner of his eye, and ran a hand back through his bloody hair again in frustration. “What I meant to say,” he ground out, giving his brother the evil eye, “was, well...I suppose I didn’t think you’d answer.” The silence stretched out between them, deep and unapproachable. Gabriel’s hand tightened against his chest wound. “...but we’re sorry for intruding,” he said at last. “Just look at the state of this place. We’ll clean it up and head out as soon as we’re done, I promise. I think we’ve caused you enough trouble for tonight.” He moved forward, making a shaky attempt to get to his feet. “Antonio, help me up.”
“Hermano...” his brother sighed, looking like he was on the verge of just dropping Gabriel and leaving him to lie in the wreckage until he healed enough to move by himself. He seemed to think better of it though, because he crawled to his feet and bent over again to lift his brother up under his arms.
“You’re not going anywhere.” Arthur said quickly. “The house was in a state before you got here and the damage done to it is mostly my fault. Try not to be such a bloody martyr and get better, alright? You can repay me with that.” It was quite a lot to say while breathing in this heavy a smell, and he swallowed, grimacing slightly. “Bring him through to the sofas in the library, there are a few that- aren’t damaged.” As in, they didn’t have arrows sticking out of them or tears where Arthur had thrown a fit. “... no dying this time, are we clear?”
For all he’d been avoiding Gabriel these past years, this encounter had brought him to a sudden realisation. Hunter or not, he couldn’t stand to lose him.
“It’s really not that bad,” Gabriel tried reassuringly, wobbling a little as he clung to his brother for support. “I’ve seen worse, honestly. You don’t have to - ” He tripped sideways over his own feet, losing his balance.
“Trust me on this one hermano,” Antonio told him, heaving one of Gabriel’s arms over his shoulder as he grabbed him firmly around the waist. “It doesn’t get much worse than this.” They dragged themselves slowly out the gap in the wall where the door had been, moving inch by shuffling inch, as far as Gabriel could go without tipping over or having to pause in order to catch his breath.
“We could get a land line,” his brother was going on, “Call for a car to take us back into town.”
“You were the one who wanted to come here in the first place remember?” Antonio replied, shifting his body weight in order to better drag Gabriel’s, who in his state was little more than dead weight on his arm. They moved through the hallway, and Antonio had to pull his brother away from the shattered dining hall, where he was staring with an increasingly alarmed expression at the giant hole in the back that extended out into the courtyard. “Really,” he muttered in a low voice, “If I’d known you’d go to pieces upon actually seeing him I’d have tied you up back in your room at HQ, for all the good it’s done us.”
They carried along in silence. “Toni...” Gabriel said quietly, as his brother helped him over the fallen banister that had once belonged to the staircase. “...how dead was I exactly?”
“...dead,” Antonio supplied as they finally came to the library. His tone was bitter. “As in I thought you were going to crumble into a six hundred year old pile of cursed dust, dead.”
Gabriel looked away. “...Ah.”
The library was in a disarrayed, cruel state, made even worse by the fact that the destruction that had taken place here had happened many years prior and hadn’t been cleaned up since. Antonio carefully sidestepped shards of broken glass, the piles of old, faded clothes over dust piles and the silvertipped arrows and bullets embedded in the walls. He tried not to think about how Gabriel had come close to that, and instead searched out when of the cleaner, less mangled couches. He found what he was looking for at the far end of the library, in a corner away from the windows; because of this it was more or less untouched. Carefully, he got his hands behind his brother and helped him first sit down, and then lie back. Gabriel sank down gratefully with a sigh and closed his eyes. Antonio found a throw rug in one of the chairs, and wrapped it around his brother to protect him from the chill; when this was taken care of he sat down on the edge of the couch, staring contemplatively at the broken windows.
“What’s it like...?” he asked.
Gabriel shifted around to get comfortable and lay back. He looked tired after having had to make the actual journey on foot. Antonio doubted he would have even made it to the forest, for all he seemed to want to leave Arthur be, now that he realized he was in the house. “What’s what like?”
Antonio looked both wistful and sad in that moment. He leaned back against the arm of the couch and looked at his brother. “You know...” he said, “Actually dying.”
Gabriel thought over this for a long time. He sighed again and looked down at his hands. “Peaceful,” he relayed thoughtfully. “Definitely peaceful. Like you haven’t a care in the world. You feel like you could sleep forever.” He hesitated.
“But...?” his brother prompted. Gabriel rubbed a hand over his face tiredly.
“...but I wasn’t ready to sleep forever,” he admitted. “I wanted to get up, but I couldn’t. It was like trying to swim through an ocean of liquid sugar. Sweet, endless limbo. I’m glad to have got out of it.”
“I’m glad too,” Antonio told him, and grasped his shoulder, “being dead doesn’t suit you at all, hermano. Where would I be without you?”
“Probably in a back alley with the other tomcats,” Gabriel replied without venom. He glanced off into the distance. “Do you think that’s why...” he trailed off. Antonio gave him a questioning look, so he tried again.
“Do you think that’s why Arthur is talking to me again?”
Antonio sighed. “Hermano, I’m not even going to pretend that I understand that guy,” he said with a snort. Gabriel looked dejected.
“Ten years,” he muttered, “Ten years and I might as well not exist to him. So why now?”
“That...I can’t answer,” Antonio replied, and pulled his brother’s blanket up higher. “But for what it’s worth hermano, he would have killed a witch or two for your sake.”
When Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up he scowled. “What?” he demanded. “This doesn’t mean I like him. It’s just... I couldn’t save you without him.”
This gave the hunter pause. “So the blood he’s covered in is... mine?”
Antonio nodded, surprisingly solemn. He cupped a hand to his brother’s forehead. “You’re a little warm,” he said. “So rest up where you can. I’ll see if I can’t find a way to get you upstairs, or at least make you more comfortable.” He got to his feet.
“I doubt it.” Arthur said, appearing in the doorway and looking extremely wet. He had his shirt, completely ruined with blood, in hand. He didn’t seem to even notice the cold. “I fear I may have ruined the stairs irreparably. I suppose I could carry you up there myself while I walk along the walls.”
“You don’t have to do that,” Gabriel said weakly, pushing himself up as he tried to glance over his shoulder without rolling off the couch entirely. “It’s no trouble - ”
“He can barely walk,” Antonio cut across, frowning in disapproval at the very idea as he firmly pushed Gabriel back down by the shoulder, “And now you want to climb the wall? He’ll fall off and break his neck and we’d have to go through the entire ordeal all over again!”
“Let’s not jump to extremes,” Gabriel ground out, glaring at him.
Arthur looked annoyed. “Fine, if you’ve decided not to trust me now, after I replaced his bloody heart, I’ll let you stay down here instead. But I’m going to get you better blankets.” he wrinkled his nose, glancing at his ruined shirt before throwing it at the fireplace. “And some new clothes.”
Gabriel looked sharply in Antonio’s direction. “He replaced my what?” he demanded incredulously.
“Nothing!” his brother replied a little too quickly, “It’s nothing hermano, you’re delirious, hearing things... ahaha,” he patted Gabriel on the forehead somewhat jerkily before he scowled in Arthur’s direction. “And for your information,” he told the vampire irritably, “It’s got nothing to do with whether I trust you or not. I’m worried more about him,” he pushed Gabriel down again, much to his increasing annoyance, “not being able to hold on more than I am about you doing impersonations of a spider. But of course if you want to make this about you...”
“I’m right here you know,” Gabriel said aloud, and swatted Antonio’s hand away from his person, though the effort was somewhat weak in and of itself, “and I’m not a newborn. I can take care of myself perfectly well.”
“You were taking care of yourself so well when that killing curse hit you.” Arthur muttered, mostly to himself, lighting a fire in the hearth and watching the clothes burn. “And just as well when the imperious curse...” he glared at the flames, mouth twisting into a snarl. “This will not be the last they hear of me. I am going to be severe with those two.” Contemplating the various ways he could remove their internal organs from them was the only thing keeping him from punching the wall. He glanced over at Antonio. “And if you don’t tell him what happened, I will. Either way, I’ll be back in a moment.” And he stalked out of the library.
As he left, Gabriel fixed Antonio with a glare so piercing that it made him want to start shuffling awkwardly from foot to foot. “What is he talking about? Is this about that witch you mentioned?”
His brother sighed heavily, sitting down on the floor. He leaned back against the couch and would not look at Gabriel. “We were careless hermano,” he said quietly, “that’s all it was. And it’s witches; plural. You remember how we were walking through the woods and there was a green light at the front gate?”
Gabriel rubbed at the side of his head with his hand. “I don’t know,” he said honestly, and closed his eyes contemplatively. “It’s still a little fuzzy. There was a flash, and I remember blacking out...”
“That was the first time you died tonight,” Antonio told him. Gabriel’s frown deepened.
“...but I woke up,” he said. “And I remember seeing a face,” he trailed off. “A young man I’d never met before. It was only for a moment though. After that it wasn’t so much unconsciousness as it was a deep, unfathomable darkness.” He looked up. “So that was a...?”
Antonio shrugged helplessly. Gabriel scowled. “Witches,” he snarled, “and those damn killing curses. It’s like being hit by a truck every single time, I swear...” His heart gave a sudden sharp twinge. The hunter hunched over himself, hissing in pain.
“I swear...” he began again, sweat dripping down his chin as he dug his nails against his skin out of the need to just squeeze something, “...I don’t remember it ever hurting this much before,” he amended, and shooed his brother away when he turned around and began hovering nervously. “It wasn’t just the killing curse was it? Killing curses don’t draw blood, and I...” he looked down at himself, at the wounds and the stains, “...I am veritably covered in it.”
Antonio shook his head wordlessly. The memory seemed to render him speechless. “It wasn’t...” he said at last, “You’re right, it wasn’t but hermano... I can’t tell you, at least not right now, it’s...”
“It’s what?” Gabriel wanted to know. “What was so bad that you had to use those coins and then willingly collaborated with Arthur?”
“Still too much of a coward to say it then, cat?” Arthur said, coming back into the room with an arm-full of blankets and clothes for both himself and Gabriel. He’d neglected to bring any for Antonio. “Typical.” Their temporary alliance to keep Gabriel alive was fast disappearing. “I’ll say it then.” He set the pile down on a less damaged sofa. “You stood in front of me and, under the Imperious Curse, ripped your own heart out.” He jabbed a thumb in Antonio’s direction. “They used crucio on him. And that, Gab, is why you need to start warning me first.”
Gabriel was silent, and stared at him for a long moment. Antonio put his face in his hands and groaned to himself. At the same time, he would have to find a way to get back at Arthur in future; what had been the point of everything they had just accomplished if in the end he ended up looking like the bad guy?
“I ...didn’t think that was....” Possible Gabriel wanted to say, but then it was hard to rule out improbable things in their line of work. His breathing had quickened a little at the thought of having a vital organ so out of place from his body. “What does that even mean?”
“Hermano don’t dig your fingers in like that,” Antonio told him, and moved to pry his brother’s hand away from his chest, where his nails had already started to draw reddened welts, “you just finished to heal, the skin is tender and we don’t want to break - ”
“There is no conceivable reason why anyone would use magic for that kind of display,” his brother snapped, moving further up on the couch to put some more distance between them. “That’s just too morbid. What did they know?”
“Know...?” Antonio repeated blankly, sitting back down again. He looked confused.
“They knew something,” his brother insisted. “How does my gutting myself open benefit anyone, let alone a vampire? You’ve heard how awful we apparently taste,” he turned his gaze back to Arthur, as though all the answers would materialize there if he only stared them down hard enough. “Arthur what did you tell them?” he whispered, not even addressing the flat statement that he should have called first.
For one thing Arthur was not a fan of the telephone, and he barely had the electricity to keep one functional. Would he have answered had he known it was Gabriel on the other end? The way things had been between them recently, the answer was clearly no. He couldn’t see how that might have changed any of what had happened, despite Arthur’s claims to the contrary.
Now it was Arthur’s turn to look uncomfortable. “... you’re aware I’ve not been in the most approachable mood recently.” There was the understatement of the century. “Alice, one of the witches that attacked you, has been a good friend to me during that time. I may... may have confided one or two personal problems in her. Though I’ve recently come to terms that it wasn’t you that k.... killed them, I’ve not relayed that to her.” He was deliberately avoiding eye contact with Gabriel, but he could feel Antonio glaring at him. “I suppose she thought of it as vengeance on my behalf, though you’ve hardly helped yourself by imprisoning and killing several of her friends and relatives.”
“So you could say that this was all your fault,” Antonio said, glowering furiously. “Why you - ”
Gabriel covered his mouth rather deliberately with one of the cushions that had been resting behind his head. “As far as I’m concerned we’re not discriminating between them,” he replied coolly, “A witch is a witch and the only good kind is a dead witch. But that’s not the point,” he went on, the ruthless hunter exterior falling away, “Given my line of work I expect to die, and a lot of the time, I actually have. But this is the first time I think I might have died and disappeared, with the looming possibility of forever. The question is why didn’t you let them? I think it’s safe to say our agreement has been pretty much null and void for the past ten years don’t you?”
He was still staring at Arthur, curious and unblinking. “You replaced my heart.” It wasn’t a question.
“It was sitting quite neatly on an actual silver platter. Which I might have to throw out now.” The mental image wasn’t going to go away. He was avoiding the actual question at hand, however, still not looking at Gabriel. “... I... look, you...” several false starts later, he sighed, putting a hand up to his head. “Can you make your brother leave before I say this? He’s starting to chew through the pillow.”
It didn’t take long for Gabriel to think this over. “Antonio,” he said, pulling the cushion off his brother at last so he could gasp for air and try to point Arthur out as the guilty party at the same time. Gabriel placed his hand between his brother’s shoulders. “I need you to leave me with Arthur for a little while. Alone.”
The way Antonio was looking at him with such wide-eyed incredulity, you would think that Gabriel had just asked him to hurl himself off a cliff. “I won’t be long,” he insisted. “Please. Do it for me.”
Antonio searched his brother’s face suspiciously before relenting. “Alright,” he grumbled, “but the moment he starts agitating your condition I am getting you out out here and we’ll head back to town.” He squeezed Gabriel’s knee affectionately as he drew himself to his feet. “I’ll be watching you,” he warned Arthur, “don’t think I won’t know what you’re up to if you make hermano upset.”
“See if you can’t find a way for us to get upstairs without having to scale a wall while you’re at it,” Gabriel called out to him as his brother left at a deliberately slow-paced walk, glancing over his shoulder every now and again as if he could catch a glimpse of their conversation if he lingered long enough. Eventually though he disappeared around the corner, though he did not look too happy for having to do so. Gabriel could hear his footsteps fading down the hallway.
He raised his eyebrow at Arthur expectantly.
The vampire was watching Antonio leave, purposefully waiting until he was out of ear shot. He turned back to Gabriel, took a deep breath, and finally blurted. “Nobody is allowed to kill you but me.” He held up a hand. “And before you comment on how morbid that is, and how I’m going back on things I said before, I want you to know that I really wasn’t myself at that time. I’m still... grieving, I suppose, and I lashed out at you and anyone. I’ve got a while to go, but I’ve decided that, since you’re one of the few people who I can actually tolerate for an extended period of time, there’s no gain from alienating you further.” He sat on one of the many chairs, and it creaked, old and worn. “... since you came here of your own accord - warn me, damnit - I’m going to assume you don’t hate me yet. So, um...” a red hue rose in his cheeks. “What I’m trying to say is... sorry, I suppose... for everything.”
“...always nice to know you’re tolerated, I suppose,” Gabriel said dryly. He looked away, and focused on the ceiling instead. “You have every right to be angry though,” he went on quietly, “Anyone else in my position would have seen the signs for what they were long ago, run away and hope that you would never find me. I know for a fact that Antonio sees them, I’ve just been choosing not to for the better part of a decade. If anyone should apologize, it’s me. I suppose,” he traced the scar over his chest with careful fingers, “what I want to apologize for is that I couldn’t be what you wanted me to be. For a while it seemed as though we could put that behind us, but you can’t really change those things, and I realize that now.” He glanced at Arthur out of the corner of his eye.
“I promise I would have called ahead, if I’d thought for a moment that you’d still want to talk to me. It’s okay if you don’t, you know. You don’t have to try for my sake just because I’m a little...” he winced suddenly and drew his hand off his chest again, “...delicate right now,” he grit out and took a long, fortifying breath.
“I’m not just doing this for your sake. It’s for my own sake as well, if you must know.” he folded his arms. “Being a useless recluse for the rest of my miserable un-life is not something I aspire to. And as much as I would love for you to give up being a Hunter, you and I know that would be too much to ask.” after a pause, he cleared his throat. “Moreover, ‘delicate’ is more a word I would use with humans that don’t get up again after having a vital organ ripped from them.” Two large eyebrows met in the middle to frown impressively. “Precisely which god did you happen to annoy so thoroughly in your travels?”
“If it wouldn’t close so many doors available to us, I’d give it up for you in a heartbeat,” Gabriel muttered, seemed to realize what he had just said and smiled a little, the corners of his mouth turning up slightly. He looked contemplatively at his hands. “There is only one true God, you know that. The rest pale in comparison.” It was a poor attempt at masking the truth, but Gabriel took it anyway.
Arthur didn’t look so convinced. “Alright, which high ranking demon or otherwise quasi-omnipotent higher supernatural being did you piss off?”
“I wasn’t aware you were so well-versed in ancient Mesoamerican deities,” Gabriel said almost to himself, noted that Arthur didn’t look like he would let up anytime soon and gave in. There was a certain disadvantage to not being able to get up and walk away from a conversation. He covered his eyes with his forearm and grimaced. “Perhaps it wouldn’t have been so angry if it didn’t try to eat us in the first place. But I suppose that’s the way it is in the underworld. I couldn’t go near any bats for years upon years, but you probably already knew that part.” He lifted his arm a little to peer at Arthur from beneath it. “Sound familiar, I wonder?”
Arthur’s mouth dropped open, speechless. He closed it again, and shook his head. “You cannot possibly mean who I think you mean. That’s- for one thing that’s blasphemous- to me at least- and you would never survive- why would he do...” he bit his hand to stop himself from jabbering senselessly. Still, he stared at Gabriel like the man had just grown a second head. After a long moment, he spoke again. “That would be why the magic on you was familiar...”
Gabriel pursed his lips. “I’ll take that to mean you saw the gold,” he said shortly. “I’ve kept those coins close to me for the entirety of our wretched existence as a reminder. The ancient idols of the New World imbued them with much power, and an old deep magic.” He pulled one of the crudely crafted coins from his pocket and held it up in the firelight. “A magic that will not cease to exist, no matter how much gold we melt down, or pieces we strike. It is a curse founded in greed.” He tossed the coin in Arthur’s direction; it glinted hypnotically as it spun. The vampire caught it, staring at the imprints and designs on it with awe.
“But Camazotz is not interested in gold, or wealth.” Gabriel continued. There was a certain darkness to his voice now, the bitterness replaced with loathing. “He is only interested in blood and sacrifice. Don’t misunderstand,” he added, when he noticed the vampire was doing a pretty good impression of a fish out of water, “I’ve not seen that smooth-talking parasite in over five hundred years.” There was a brazen cruelty to his smile that Arthur usually did not see; it was an anger that went deep, far deeper than Gabriel cared to touch. “Rest assured if I had, his head would have been mounted and stuffed in the Vatican crypts long ago.”
“Insolence!” Arthur suddenly burst forth with, then reigned himself in. He was more shocked than angry, particularly in the fact of Gabriel’s own seething rage. He took a deep breath to steady himself. “You’ll pardon me if I am a little insulted by your descriptions of Lord Camazotz. He is somewhat of a vampire deity.” His eyes fell on the gold coin in his hand. Arthur liked gold; he had accumulated a lot of material wealth over the centuries. Dead men had no use for money, after all, and Arthur was the maker of a lot of dead men. But this coin... “If you did indeed steal from Camazotz,” and he couldn’t sound more incredulous at the idea, “I’m not sure whether to be impressed or appalled.”
His fingers traced the patterns gently, nearly lovingly. “He saw fit to curse you rather than kill you,” he mused to himself. “Either you made him so angry that he decreed you would suffer for all eternity, or... he had some kind of greater plan.” A wry sort of smile appeared. “After all, had you not been immortal, we never would have met.” The smile vanished. “You brother would also be on his own.”
Gabriel seemed to muse quietly over this. “Heaven forbid anyone would leave Antonio to wander around by himself, especially with his unfortunate...condition. If I weren’t here I’d probably have been rolling in my grave wondering what scrapes he’d have got into.” He closed his eyes. “I’d always wanted a career on the sea, to discover the world, perhaps settle down and marry a nobleman’s daughter and have children in the distant future...though it’s five hundred years too late for that now. Far be it from me to guess at the mind games of a twisted, blood sucking mammal.” The distaste in his voice made it plain just what he thought of Camazotz’s godhood.
“We stole gold from a number of places,” he admitted dryly, “Call it the hot blooded passion of youth in possession of sharp objects and muskets, but Camazotz was the only one who came to collect his dues. Personally I feel he was just disappointed that he missed out on the chance to acquire our heads for sport.” He turned his head. “You may keep that coin if you wish,” he offered. “I don’t mind so much if you want to hold on to it, so long as you don’t sell it. You have no idea how troublesome it is to get them out of people’s hands these days.”
“Sell it? I wouldn’t let go of it for all the gold in England!” Arthur exclaimed, closing his hand around the precious coin, before realising how he sounded. “... this is practically a holy relic to me, you realise. But are you sure? It seemed pretty important to the ritual that kept you alive, back there...”
“I’ll be having nightmares about that for months,” Gabriel muttered, mostly to himself. He made an attempt at sitting up a little, chest heaving shallowly. He felt run over, as though his heart would pop out of place if he so much as breathed wrong. In the end all he managed was to slump awkwardly over the armrest, sweat sticking his curls against his forehead. He pushed them away in annoyance before his expression softened.
“I want you to have it,” he insisted. “It’s not the one coin that works the magic, but the strength of the person calling on it. Don’t look at me like that,” he said when Arthur gave him a contemptuous look, “I know he may not look it but Antonio is perfectly capable. Think of it as keeping a piece of me with you. Ah...” he paused suddenly, as if remembering something unpleasant, “...I mean, if you want to that is. Given all that’s happened I suppose we’re not, well... you know.” He gestured somewhat weakly between them with a fingertip. “But that’s more than understandable. I suppose it works just as well as a token of friendship.”
Arthur didn’t really know what to say to that. He’d never exactly made it a habit to declare his love from the rooftops, and now he couldn’t be sure if Gabriel had just effectively broken off their relationship or if he was implying that it would be better for all parties if they had. He certainly wasn’t acting as though they were together anymore, but he supposed that that was more or less fault on his part. Given his own behaviour these past ten years or so, he’d have been surprised had Gabriel formed an impression to the contrary. He clenched the coin in his fist and silently worked his jaw.
“Um... I don’t... intend to end our relations, Gab.” he said tentatively, watching the other man’s reactions just in case he put his foot in his mouth. “Unless you want to, which I can also understand because, well, what just happened wasn’t particularly pleasant and I’m not the easiest to get along with anymore and I’m probably going to go back to being a miserable shut in after this for another few years until I decide to face people again-” he stopped himself babbling, pursing his lips and looking down at the coin. “... while this is an invaluable trinket to give me, I’d... much rather have your company.” He was blushing, he could feel it, the sudden rush of blood in his ears as his heart restarted, remembering reactions to emotions his body had had when he was alive.
“If they haven’t ended already,” Gabriel said a little bitterly. “But I’ve invested quite a bit of my immortal life in this relationship and I don’t intend to break it for anything. You don’t honestly think I keep coming back here for the scenery do you?” he inquired bluntly and pushed himself up into an upright position. His skin was glistening with feverish sweat. “I’ll stay for as long as you’ll have me. It’s not...well. It’s not good for you to be here alone by yourself.”
Arthur let a small smile appear. “Well you’re not going anywhere like this. I’m afraid you’ll simply have to stay.” he concluded. He picked up a blanket and used the corner to dab some of the sweat off Gabriel’s forehead. “I did not just fight off two witches for nothing. Maybe I should make Antonio get you some towels as well...” he pressed a cold hand against hot skin, frowning at the intensity of the difference. It had happened before, but it was worrying none the less.
“It will pass,” the hunter replied; the clearness in his eyes was fading now, slowly being replaced by the foggy sensation of fever. He was shivering imperceptibly as his body worked to get over the trauma it had just been through. Moving carefully, he hunched up small under the blanket; the roaring fireplace was creating a warm, heady atmosphere that was making his mind blank and fuzzy. “...but then again I’ve never had a vital organ pulled out of my body, so it’s difficult to say how long that will actually take. Silly little thing, the heart, don’t you think?” He sighed and turned his face into Arthur’s palm, lips against the pulse point on his wrist, which would have been well and good had he a pulse to begin with. “Lose it and the whole world might as well come crashing down after you with a vengeance.”
“Hence why this is not going to happen in future.” Arthur sighed, gently stroking his thumb across Gabriel’s cheek. It was always difficult to see Gabriel weakened like this. Any other person would never believe this was the same man that was used in bed time stories to scare little vampire and werewolf pups. Arthur should feel privileged, but instead he was just worried. Pointless, since Gabriel would survive this, but still. “You should probably get some rest, Gab. I’ll try and think of a way to get upstairs later...” or he could bring the bed down here, but it would be difficult, to get it through the doorway.
Gabriel closed his eyes. It wasn’t too hard to want to sleep; his face, let alone his entire body, felt as though it had been carved out of lead, heavy and too difficult to keep still for much longer. The tension in his shoulders seemed to relax a little and for a moment his haggard features looked softer, younger almost. But then he blinked, eyes desperate to stay open, though only visible through the barest of slits, and the expression and vulnerability was gone. “I’d rather it didn’t,” he murmured, and seemed to sag deeper into the couch cushions. “Happen again, that is,” he clarified somewhat thickly. He closed his eyes again; adrift somewhere between semi-consciousness and blacking out. “Nasty business...” His breathing evened out, becoming slow and ending on a sigh, “...coming back from the dead.” He was out cold within the minute, exhaustion finally taking its toll.
Arthur watched him for a little while, then sighed to himself, leaning back in his chair. He was pretty spent too, having two fights during one night, not to mention every other stress that had come his way. Green eyes tracked the rise and fall of Gabriel’s chest, making sure it kept an even rhythm, mostly to reassure himself. This whole incident had made him face a few facts. Even though his coven was gone, he shouldn’t just shut himself away forever. And even if he had no family, at least he had a few things left for him to cherish, however quietly.
And lastly... if he hadn’t needed to renovate the house before, he certainly did now.
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[End]
A/N:
Belgium = Alice [a witch]
Netherlands = Lars [a warlock]
Portugal = Gabriel [a hunter]
Spain [also a hunter]
England [a vampire]
If you want to read hellzabeth's original fanfic that spawned this universe, you can find it all monster_au here.
Spells and the like shamelessly ganked from the Harry Potter universe. As if this AU wasn't a hodge-podge already. |D;
Though I feel it has to be said that this entire fic on its lonesome is about half the size of that (which is 13 chapters long). And this is why we should never be allowed to collaborate ever. |D;