"from heaven came" 1/60 - PG
title: from heaven came (part 1 of 60)
author:rosivan
rating/warning: PG, spoilers for 5x19
wordcount: ~970
prompt: #01 - A friend is someone who understands your past, believes your future and accepts you just the way you are.
summary: A hand reaches out in the darkness.
[ Master Post]
Gabriel opens his eyes to the darkness, to what he assumes is his death shroud, granted to him by his time among the pagans. He cannot feel his grace - it is gone from him. He feels heavy and physical, but a bodiless being, like his awareness and sins are weighing him down. He lingers, for reasons he cannot define.
Into the void he pushes a tentative, Howdy? and receives no response.
So Gabriel settles, somehow, and waits.
-
Someone reaches into the darkness and suddenly there is warmth and light. Something is pressed to his chest and Gabriel finds himself flooded, filled to the brim with the honey and wine burn of Heaven. It is familiar and fits perfectly, spilling and pulling in all the correct places. It's his Grace - polished and renewed, as if exactly like it once was, straight from the Hand of God. Gabriel opens his eyes again, his true eyes, and the shroud of his wings unfurl, every part of him reawakening.
He is not in Heaven, not in Hell, nor any place on Earth. It is some other plane of awareness, shivering in between. It is peaceful and bright, empty of everything except Gabriel and the one who woke him.
"Hey bro," Gabriel mutters, still enough of his former self to phrase it in such a manner. He's grateful enough to be alive and moving, not at all fallen, so he reigns in his sarcastic pride. For the moment anyway.
Michael smiles at him, holy-bright and genuinely happy to look upon him. "Gabriel."
"Why're you doing this?" Gabriel asks, because Michael's got that look - that 'I've got all the time to wait for you to speak first' look, and if it's one instinctual thing that Gabriel has, it's to talk. "I was dust."
"Less than dust," Michael agrees as he slips his fingers among the feathers along the back of Gabriel's neck. It's a familiar touch, and Gabriel aches at it, the action long stuffed away and forced-forgotten. "You were a firestorm snuffed out like a candle."
With his hands resting on the outside curve of Michael's arms, Gabriel smiled tightly. "What about our other brothers and sisters? Relighting their torches, too?"
"They are matches," Michael replied, too calm for Gabriel's liking. "Struck and lit, and blinking out."
Gabriel tore away from him, shaking. Nothing had changed in his time away. Not that he had expected things to. "Why'd you really bring me back, Mikey? Daddy say so?"
Michael's Grace flared for a moment and his head slipped to the side a little. "This...was my decision." His voice was hesitant, and Gabriel could guess why - he wasn't used to making his own decisions in this manner - they were too large, too independent.
"I died. It was in God's plan," Gabriel pointed out, not exactly able to restrain himself from taking a jab at his brother. "You're going against it?"
"You're to sound the horn of judgement at the end," Michael said evenly. "Difficult to do so if you are not there."
Gabriel made a sound similar to a laugh. Of course. "I'm sure someone else is as musically talented as I am."
"Why are you fighting this? Do you want to die?" He drew close to Gabriel again, his expression twisted in confusion and something a lot like anger. He examined Gabriel as if trying to read his thoughts - a privilege Gabriel was firmly not allowing.
"I'm not fighting for you, Michael." Gabriel said, tasting the words again, similar ones spoken so soon before his death. "Or Lucifer. I am done taking sides between you."
Michael's wings shook out behind him, a mixture of tension and frustration. "I am not asking you to, brother," he clarified, and rested a gentle hand on Gabriel's shoulder. "I am asking you to play your role in God's plan. That is all."
"Really," Gabriel said flatly, eyes narrowed in suspicion. "You're just going to let me sashay out of here?"
"You must sound the horn," Michael repeated. Then, he admitted reluctantly, "Only you will know when."
This was something new to Gabriel. Before, when he was lined up among his brothers in Heaven, he never questioned that they would be separated from each other at the end of days. Never questioned that maybe the others wouldn't know what he did. Oh, how things changed. "I get it," he murmured, perhaps with a little bit of satisfaction. "I'm the only one with the doomsday clock around here." He asked curiously, "You really can't sense it?"
"Vaguely," Michael said, and his feathers rippled in slight irritation.
Gabriel chuckled and pressed the flat of his hand to Michael's cheek, as tender as he could offer, even after being brought back to life. "You let me out," he warned, because despite everything, he still loved his brother, "And I'm gonna help those Winchester boys, you know that don't you?"
"They will come to accept their roles as well." Michael's conviction was unwavering, certain that Sam and Dean would become the vessels, just as certain that Gabriel would sound the horn to bring forth the judgement of souls.
"I really bet they won't," Gabriel said with the same certainty, and withdrew his hand. He waved generally at the plane around them, moving from his brother's touch. "This is your toy box, isn't it, Michael? You used to come in here to think."
"Sanctuary," the other archangel corrected, as he had many times. "Do you understand your role, Gabriel?"
"I have always understood, Michael."
They held each other's gaze, and Michael nodded. Gabriel vanished as soon as he felt the wards shift, flying swiftly away through one of the cracks - away from his brother, away from his death, and back to the slowly crumbling earth.
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