[SPN] faith is a series of complications (13a/16; twelfth act, part a)
XII: twelfth act-goodbye halcyon days.
Gabriel had really hoped that he wouldn’t be here when this happened, but there was no real way for him to get out of it-at least not in his current state. He had expended way too much energy in transporting both him and Castiel around to get the Colt, and then return to where Eve was. It had been hard enough to use his powers in his current state, but to do it while going through Eve’s barriers… pretty much all the Grace he had was gone again, and recharging was going to be a straight bitch to do.
Still, that he could handle. What he couldn’t handle was seeing things quickly breaking down between Castiel and Dean, as soon as the angel had placed him onto the small cot in Bobby’s study.
“Really, Cas?” Dean demanded. “Really? Of all people, Crowley?”
Castiel clenched his jaw, looking straight back at Dean with a glare of his own. “It does not matter now. I have ended my partnership with him.”
Dean let out a hiss of frustration. “That isn’t the point, Cas. Why did you even think that working with Crowley-why did you even work with him?”
“…it seemed like the best option at the time,” the angel returned, much more quietly this time as he turned his gaze away from Dean and looked right at him instead. “I know better now.”
Gabriel stared back for a moment before he shifted to glance at Dean instead, and he watched as the hunter looked between them and quickly put two and two together. “You knew, Gabriel?” he snapped out now. “You knew, and you didn’t tell us?”
The archangel only narrowed his eyes. “It’s up to Cas to tell you about this, Dean,” he replied. “I’ve got no right to interfere in this.”
“Like you didn’t interfere when the Apocalypse happened?” the man shouted back in return. “Or with Eve?”
“They are entirely different things-” he started to retort, but Dean cut him short before Gabriel could say anything more than that.
“You’re just being a fucking coward again, you asshole!” Dean almost roared out then, his eyes blazing in anger. “You’re afraid to stand up to him because you don’t want to lose him! Or were you too busy screwing with Cas to care about anything else?”
Despite knowing that something like that was going to be said, the archangel still couldn’t help but flinch at the words, struck hard by the weight of them. Castiel stepped in soon enough, a seriously displeased expression on his face as he glared at Dean and warned in a dangerously quiet voice. “Do not drag Gabriel into this, Dean. He is not related to this matter.”
Rather than heeding the unspoken warning, it flew right over Dean’s head instead and the hunter snapped right back at Castiel. “How the fuck is he not involved in this? He’s been backing you all this time!”
“Gabriel is the one who taught me otherwise,” the angel returned, soft and quiet but still sounding very, very dangerous. “He has never ‘backed’ me up. When he knew what I was up to, he confronted me himself and made me learn the error of my ways. He has been helping us and aiding us the best he can, despite his condition, and he wore himself out in getting the Colt from its place. Gabriel is doing all he can to stop Crowley, but yet you only see things on the surface and make biased assumptions.” Castiel set his jaw in a firm line as he challenged Dean’s glare with his own as he finished what he wanted to say. “I thought of you as a better man than that, Dean.”
Dean only glowered, giving Cas a brief glare before he turned around. “You’re the one who made the first move, Cas,” he spoke, and this time the anger sounded much more personal, much more hurt. “You started this.”
“And I have ended it, but apparently you are too blind to see that,” Castiel retorted with venom in his voice, and Gabriel decided to keep quiet as the angel bent down and picked him up again. “If this is what you think, then we shall not intrude here any longer.”
Sam snapped his head up at those words, clearly surprised by what Cas had just said. Dean, on the other hand, stayed silent and unmoving, his back still facing towards both angels. Castiel seemed to have taken the lack of action as a response of its own; Gabriel could see something shifting across his face, before Castiel quickly covered it up with a mask of indifference.
“Goodbye, Dean,” he spoke, and before either of the Winchesters could speak Castiel opened his wings and flew both of them away from Sioux Falls.
“Man, that is one bad breakup scene there.”
Gabriel made a sigh of agreement as he leaned back on the couch, wondering when did crappy, overdramatic (as well as unnecessary long-seriously, 787 episodes?) Asian dramas mange to encapsulate his life so well. “Seriously,” he muttered morosely, idly flicking a cola sweet into his mouth as he spoke. “They’re both complete failures in properly talking about their feelings.”
Loki snorted from beside him, her gaze fixed on the television in front of them as the girl channel started to surfed across her home’s cable network once more, after having paused to watch said bad breakup scene earlier. She frowned as she went through some of the later channels and quickly ended up shutting off the television. “Why can’t the good stuff just air the same time that America does?” she grumbled as she tossed the remote onto the table, looking evidently displeased. “I hate this 24 hour wait bullshit that the company pulls here.”
“You could always move,” the archangel pointed out easily.
The Trickster rolled her eyes in response. “And get myself involved in pagan politics?” she went with a snort. “Not a chance, man. I like the easy life here.” To emphasize her point, the girl patted the armrest of her couch, as if to assure the furniture that she would still be around no matter what.
Gabriel rolled his eyes this time, letting out a sound of exasperation as he turned around to glance at the calendar hanging from the nearby windowsill. It had been a while (a bit over a week, to be precise) since Castiel had that big blowout with Dean and subsequently brought both him and Gabriel back to the Trickster’s place in Singapore. Loki had kindly allowed them to stay after the two angels had randomly turned up at her doorstep, and to her credit she didn’t poke or prod in the time Cas hung around and generally did nothing else but mope. In all his time being around, Gabriel didn’t know when he had seen an angel as depressed as Castiel was right there and then.
Still, considering the situation there really wasn’t anything much that he could do; Gabriel did his best though, mostly by sticking around and nudging the angel to eat or drink something every once in a while, at least to feel slightly better. Loki attempted to aid the archangel in that aspect as well, although as much as he did love his sweets he had to stop the girl from feeding Cas things like rock sugar and Hershey’s chocolate syrup that came straight from the bottle (“Hey, do you even know how much a bottle costs around here? It’s a rip-off, I tell you! I’m doing him a favor!”).
They did sleep together a few times, although it was Gabriel who had to do most of the work there. The archangel didn’t mind so much-he had his fair share of this during his somewhat decently long run as Loki-but it still hurt, seeing Cas looking so broken and lost as the angel trembled and shook like a leaf in his arms, making quiet, broken sounds into the skin of Gabriel’s shoulder. The only comfort he could really take from it was that usually Cas was so worn out after, that he fell asleep right after, although Gabriel did worry for a while over that. It was a fact that angels didn’t need to sleep, technically speaking, and while he had been an exception… it took Loki giving the angel a once over to assuage his fears, but once he knew that Cas was alright Gabriel could feel a little better.
This morning, though, Gabriel had woken up to find Cas gone and a note on the bedside table in the angel’s place, informing the archangel that he would be out for a while. The note did fill him with a certain amount of relief, if Gabriel had to admit it; the fact that Castiel was moving around again, being his serious self, at least showed that he was starting to get over it. Or he was just locking it deep, deep down inside his heart. Gabriel sincerely hoped that it wasn’t the latter.
So now here he was in the living room and having channel surfed with Loki; the Trickster now had her attention directed to the two different flyers in her hand which the girl seemed to be mulling over quite seriously. “I wonder if Pizza Hut has any deals on offer…”
The archangel let out a snort. “We should just poof over to the nearest mall,” he suggested. “There’s a whole bunch of them around here, right?”
“Not as much as the east,” Loki replied with another snort of her own, looking up from the flyers. “You should see Tampines; three malls in one spot, man. I don’t know what people were thinking when they did that. Anyway, I wouldn’t suggest poofing to the mall. Sunday crowds are a bitch to get around in.”
“You said the same thing about Saturday,” Gabriel went pointedly.
Loki rolled her eyes once more. “Fine, weekend crowds are a bitch to go through. Happy now?”
“It helps when you actually make decent sense,” the archangel replied with a smirk, quickly evading the cushion that the Trickster promptly lugged in his direction at the response.
“Idiot,” she went, although the fond grin on her face completely ruined whatever venom that had been in her voice.
Gabriel threw the cushion back at Loki. “You’d have me no other way.”
The girl made a small, amused sound as she caught the cushion and placed it back in its original spot on the couch. “I see your giant ego has been inflated again. I didn’t know sleeping with Cas could give you such a boost in confidence.”
Whatever good mood the archangel had instantly dissipated at that comment. Gabriel instantly scowled, looking none too happy with said comment as he sagged back into the couch. “It’s nothing like that,” he eventually muttered, keeping his gaze set on the blank television.
There was a moment’s pause before Loki let out a soft sigh from beside him. “Sorry, Gabe. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” She shifted around after saying that, moving so that she was facing the archangel properly and could now look at him without the need to twist her head around. “How is Cas, anyway? I felt him leave this morning.”
“He left a note. Said that he’d be out for a while,” Gabriel replied with a shrug, turning his gaze to stare out of the window, and to the apartment standing beside the one Loki lived in. “It’s good that he’s going out again. Means he’s starting to get himself back together.”
The girl let out a hum of agreement to the comment. “I sure hope so too,” she added, following Gabriel’s gaze to the window. Both Tricksters remained quiet for a while after that, letting the silence fill in the blanks for them where words failed to.
It was odd to be doing this again after so long, Gabriel mentally mused to himself. He always had a habit of having his moments of silence in Heaven, a reprieve from all the fighting and backstabbing that his brothers did to each other that did nothing but ruin the peace they all shared once upon a time. When he fled from his home to stay on Earth, things hadn’t been much better either-Earth was a ball of chaos and disorder, a complete difference to what Heaven once was, and above all of that pandemonium stood the Trickster, back then with bright pink hair that was crusted with dried blood and inhumanly blue eyes.
In the beginning, he had followed her out of curiosity-tales of the Trickster were wild and varied across Heaven, whispered in stories that few could put stock in. The story of a God who had been banished to the Earth and chained with humans, the tales about a nameless God who was the equal and direct opposite of their Father; who could ever believe in something like that? And now that Gabriel was seeing her in the flesh… well, curiosity had always been one of his stronger impulses.
So he had followed her, Heaven’s Messenger after the wayward Trickster, and he watched as chaos followed in her footsteps. He had watched as she razed Pompeii down to the ground and ended up fleeing from the terrible sight that washed before his eyes. Even as an archangel he knew that his power was nothing compared to hers; to her he was just like how humans were to angels, and Gabriel knew better than to get in her way, even as he continued to tail her in the following centuries-except much more carefully this time.
He had thought he was careful then, making sure that he didn’t give any indication of himself away-which was why, when she called him out one day out of the blue, it had done nothing but frighten Gabriel and made the archangel expect the worst. Now though, in retrospect, considering the fact that he was tailing the Trickster, it should have been obvious that she already noticed him from the start and if she wanted to, would have gotten rid of him a long time ago.
I’m pretty certain that one of Heaven’s finest should have better things to do than follow me around for the last couple of centuries, he could still recall the words that she had spoken back then. Are things upstairs that boring these days?
From there it had been… a rather strange friendship of sorts, if Gabriel had to find a way to describe it. The Trickster’s title alone was more than enough to inspire fear in everybody, but yet it was hard to see at first glance just how she could be the Adversary, even though he had witnessed the destruction she wrought down upon Pompeii. She had taken him under her wing and let him tag along with her as she wandered around the world, watching it shift and evolve even as she remained as a constant, unchanging fixture.
In a way, perhaps that was why he hadn’t been so surprised when she had accepted the offer to head the pagans and stand on as their impartial judge. Unlike all of them she had no origin to worry about, no believers or religion that would put her in any difficult position. She was the nameless God, the God without a form or origin or anything at all that could identify her. It did make sense that she would be the best choice for something like that. What did surprise him, was what she had done right after the position had been given to her.
Starting from right now, you’re going to be Loki. And just like that, he was no longer just Gabriel, not simply the Messenger who had fled out of Heaven to roam the Earth-he was Loki the Trickster; a Trickster, one of the first to live under the Trickster’s Law. She had given him a new life and granted him a freedom that Heaven would never have allowed him, and from then on Gabriel knew that he owed a lot of things to her. She had already given him so much, and more, and then now…
Loki shifted beside him at that moment, cutting Gabriel off from his thoughts. Sagging back even more against the couch, the girl closed her eyes and sighed out loudly. “I’m sorry that it turned out this way for both of you. I wish it could be otherwise.”
Gabriel snorted quietly at those words. “It could have been worse,” he simply went in return, remembering what Loki had said to him back after the meeting with the pagans. “At least now it’s certain that Cas and Crowley aren’t so keen to be study partners anymore.” The demon had always been one for his own gain, working for his own survival and power with little regard to anything else; there was no way that the partnership that Cas had with him would ever work out well in the end.
“Still,” the girl muttered, opening her eyes to stare at the blank television. “I really hope that Cas is alright.”
“He’ll get through it,” Gabriel assured the other, his mind flashing back to his time back in Heaven, when Castiel had been his garrison’s best and most sought out strategist-recalling his passion and his unshakable will, two things that had still remained in the angel even until now. “He’s much better than letting himself mope around.”
Despite having said that, Gabriel still couldn’t help but worry as the day continued to pass, and there was still no sign of Castiel to be seen or felt at all. He did trust that the angel would know better than to do anything foolish… but then again, there was no real way of telling just what Cas might do these days; things had changed far too much since the would-be Apocalypse for the archangel to actually know just what went through Castiel’s mind nowadays. As much as he wished it would be otherwise, Gabriel had to admit that things had never been the same since then-this was a world he had never been prepared for, a time he had not seen coming at all. This was now a time when fate and destiny had been torn down, leaving nothing but freedom and choice. It was the ultimate haven… or perhaps the beginning of absolute chaos. There was no real way to tell which was which now.
Funny, that’s the only thing I’m certain about, the archangel mused darkly to himself, as he glanced up towards the clock hanging from the wall opposite him. Three hours into the next day and Castiel still hadn’t returned; Gabriel would be lying if he said he wasn't extremely worried right now. Considering how things were going at this moment, it was only all too easy to imagine Crowley catching the angel off-guard-or worse, Raphael…
Just as that thought came to mind, the familiar sound of beating wings came from the space beside him, and Gabriel instantly turned his head around, his mouth already starting to open. “Cas-”
The archangel stopped when he found himself staring at the figure of Balthazar instead. The angel flashed a wry smile, opting not to say anything as he reached out instead and grabbed Gabriel by his arm. The world shifted around them before Gabriel had a chance to say anything, flashing to wherever Balthazar had decided to fly to as his destination.
He pulled back once they had landed, scowling just a little at Balthazar as he spoke. “Bal, what the hell are you even-”
“…Gabriel?”
Turning his head at that call, the archangel's eyes widened when he quickly made out (there was sunlight again-he must be back in the States) the tired figure of Castiel sitting on a stool nearby, looking grim and somehow none too pleased about Gabriel's appearance in the place. The angel looked at him for a moment, before transferring his gaze over to Balthazar, who only shrugged nonchalantly at the frown that Castiel was sending him right now.
“I thought that giving you a little moral support would be beneficial,” was all that he said in response.
Castiel closed his eyes at the answer, letting out a weary sigh as he sagged down further on the stool. “We agreed not to bring Gabriel into this, Balthazar.”
Into what now? The archangel wondered quietly as he watched Balthazar shrug once more and heard his flippant reply. “He's not really into this if we don't tell him how you're about to go on a suicide mission, yes?”
Suicide-wait, what?
“What?” Gabriel went, eyes going wide as he looked at the two angels, hoping that he hadn't heard it right the first time round. Did Balthazar seriously just say suicide mission?
Castiel instantly threw a scowl at the other angel. “Balthazar,” he started warningly.
“Oops,” Balthazar put on what was possibly the worst expression of false surprise ever in the history of mankind, arms and shoulders set in the universal language of 'I don't know'. “Was I not supposed to say how you plan to storm Crowley's lab alone and most likely march to your own death? Because I think I just said it.” He shrugged yet again. “Oops.”
Gabriel looked right at Castiel then, feeling a frown starting to form on his face. “Cas-”
The angel held up a hand to stop the archangel from speaking any further than that. “Don't stop me, Gabriel,” he went, grim determination already written across his face. “What has happened with Crowley is my fault; I will take responsibility for my actions.”
Father, was Cas that set on emulating Dean Winchester? “Taking responsibility doesn't mean throwing yourself into a freaking suicide mission,” Gabriel hissed out, wondering when things had become this bad. “There are other ways to solve this problem, Cas.”
Castiel, however, was not convinced. “There is no time. We have to stop Crowley before he opens Purgatory.”
“I know,” the archangel returned. “But things are not going to be better, even if you do a suicide mission. There's another way around this. There's always another way.”
The angel only gave him a brief glare at the words, jaw clenched. “You didn't seem so sure of that during the Apocalypse.”
Gabriel flinched at the response, completely taken aback by it. Of all the things to have been said... “That's a different thing, Cas.”
“Because it was destined?” Castiel snapped back, eyes flashing in barely-restrained anger. “Because you believed that it couldn't be changed? Because it has changed, and we proved that destiny isn't absolute. You were just tired of seeing Michael and Lucifer battling each other. I am just tired of having to keep losing the people closest to me. I just want this all to be over, in the same way that you once did.” He looked away then, refusing to look Gabriel in the eye even as he continued to speak. “I tried to make Heaven better. I attempted to show what free will was to the other angels. But they didn't understand, and then Raphael beat me to an inch from death and told me that he wanted to bring back the Apocalypse. He said that he would kill me if I tried to resist him.”
Gabriel knew that he should say something, offer some words in order to give Castiel some peace of mind-but he couldn't find the words to say, unsure of what could even be spoken to the angel. All he could do was to simply listen as Castiel all but let out everything that he had been holding back for what had seemed to be a long, long time.
“I have been trying to do what I can, what I must do in order to preserve everything that has been fought for,” the angel went, and young as he was by the standards of almost all the other angels, Gabriel couldn’t help but hear the note of weariness in Castiel’s voice, the tone of one who had seen and heard and experienced far too much-more than what he could have ever wished for. “I have been trying to stop Raphael from unleashing Apocalypse again and attempting to keep peace up in Heaven. I have been trying to do my best to do what is right, but I have no idea what is right and what is wrong any more here.” He looked back at Gabriel then, and in that moment the archangel could see just how lost Castiel was, to see the hopelessness and desperation painted on his face and showing so blatantly to the world. “Tell me, Gabriel, please. Just what do I have to do?”
And wasn’t that the question everybody wished they had an answer for? Gabriel closed his eyes, trying to think and put his thoughts in order. In a way, he couldn’t fault Cas for his line of thought-after all, he had gone through the same thing as well. In fact, if he had to be honest with himself, he was still going through it; even now, he still had no idea just what he was doing. He was helping Castiel, trying to stop Purgatory from being opened… but for what reason? That answer still eluded him, no matter how much he tried to find one he could settle on.
But right now, this wasn’t about him-this was about Cas, and the ways that he could help the angel. Gabriel opened back his eyes, looking at Castiel and regarded him with a quiet, contemplative look. “I can’t answer that for you, Cas,” he replied, nothing but honestly in his voice. “Nobody can. You need to find the answer yourself.” Funny how all the answers can come for others so easily, when he doesn’t have them for himself.
Castiel looked at him for a few moments before he lowered his gaze, glancing down to the floor instead. A tense moment hung in the air between them, every second a countdown towards what the angel’s decision would turn out to be like.
Balthazar broke the silence eventually, shifting on his foot as he looked at Castiel and asked the question. “So, what’s it going to be? Are you still going, or are you staying instead?”
Gabriel held his breath as Cas raised his head back up, blue eyes darting between them for a few short seconds before landing his gaze squarely on the archangel.
“I think,” Castiel started, slowly and carefully. “That we should go and scout out Crowley’s lab, and then return to plan on what to do next.”
Gabriel instantly deflated at that, sagging as he let out a loud sigh of relief and tension drained out from his body. “Yeah,” he replied, and there was no way to hide the small smile that crossed his face. “Yeah, we can do that.”
They flew over to Crowley’s lab as soon as they were ready-or more accurately, Castiel and Balthazar flew over with Gabriel tagging alongside them, since he was still recovering after all the Grace he had to expend back during the showdown with Eve. It was going to be a while before the archangel could regain even a fraction of his former strength, a fact that Gabriel wasn't all that pleased about. Still, there wasn't anything he could do about it; all that he could do was to simply wait until it did all come back to him.
For now, what was more important was to find a way to stop Crowley without jeopardizing anybody, most of all Castiel. The three of them crouched behind some rubble that stood not too far from the abandoned lab that Crowley had converted into his own place of research. From where they hid, it was easy enough to make out the guards that were stationed at areas around the building, along with the various Enochian wards that were scrawled across the walls, the sigils pulsing a strange, eerie light.
The three of them ducked down as the guards started to move, and Gabriel turned his attention to the two angels, quickly speaking up before Castiel could suggest something possibly stupid and suicidal (for him). “I've got an idea.”
Balthazar snorted quietly. “Of course you do,” he muttered, voice betraying the amusement that his face managed to not show.
Gabriel gave the angel a brief glare at that, before he turned his attention to Cas. “I'll slip around the guards and go sabotage the wards from inside. Once they fall, the both of you jump in and we'll try to get our Eve and get her out. Between the three of us, there shouldn't be too much of a problem.” Regardless of his current condition, there still weren’t that many things in the world that could take out an archangel. True, he might have to get a little dirty, but it wasn't as if he hadn't gone through-or even done-worse things already.
Castiel took a moment to properly digest the plan given. “There are many demons patrolling the area,” he started after a pause, tilting his head. “How do you plan to avoid them?”
He had to admit that the angel had a point there. With that many guards patrolling around, there was no way Gabriel could slip into the building so easily, much less without meeting with resistance. They couldn't afford that. Thinking back to what he had seen earlier, Gabriel attempted to come up with a new plan that would be far more workable but with no real success.
Cas took the ongoing silence as his cue to speak up. “I have a plan.”
Balthazar rolled his eyes. “It's time for the kamikaze tactic then, I see,” he spoke up, voice dry. “Excellent.”
The angel looked at his companion with a look that betrayed his confusion, but didn't question the other's words. Instead he looked over their cover, to study the patrolling demons for another moment, before he turned back to both of them and started to talk again. “Balthazar and I will distract the guards, and Gabriel will get past them while we're fighting them. If it’s possible, we'll try to keep the demons off Gabriel for as long as possible until he gets to the wards. Once they're gone, I will get Gabriel and we'll make our way to Crowley.”
“It all sounds so simple when you put it like that,” Balthazar remarked, sarcasm still dripping from his words. Despite the tone though, Gabriel could already see the flash of steel that glinted from the angel blade that he had already brought out; he was more than ready to strike once things were in action.
And when even Balthazar was ready and going, there was no way that Gabriel could oppose now. The archangel glanced between the other two for another moment before he sighed and nodded, resigning himself to Castiel's tactic. So much for the clean and easy way.
Castiel nodded back, acknowledging Gabriel's agreement as he followed Balthazar and pulled out his own sword. The blade gleamed as it slipped into the physical plane, taking on a definite form from a Grace-mixed intangible one. For a moment, seeing the two angels summoning out their blades did make Gabriel miss his own; he still wasn't able to bring it out from him, as weak as he still was. The archangel figured that he would only ever be able to summon it when he was actually a proper angel once again.
And only Father knows when that will be, he finished sourly in his head before shifting, moving closer to the edge. He kept one eye on Castiel and Balthazar, who were preparing to move, watching as the two angels spread out their wings; pure white for Cas and a faded ashen gray for Balthazar. Swords gripped tight in their hands, Gabriel gave them one more glance before nodding, giving them the go ahead to start moving.
Cas was the one who went first as soon as the signal was given; with a beat of his wings the angel moved, flying to right behind one of the demons and promptly stabbed his blade straight through the demon's heart. The demon didn't even have a moment to register what had happened before Grace burned through the veins of the human it was possessing, tearing right into the demon and killing it instantaneously with a brief flash of light from the vessel's eyes and mouth.
A second demon had just rounded the corner when the light came, and instantly it was quickly running towards Castiel, mouth open in order to start shouting. “In-”
Balthazar made his move before the demon could say any more than that, forgoing his blade entirely as he burned the demon out with the power of his Grace alone. Unlike Castiel, he did it with much more subtlety and efficiency, taking out the demon with minimal fanfare-none of which surprised Gabriel; there was a reason why Balthazar had always been regarded as one of the best scouts amongst the Host back up in Heaven.
As soon as both of the demons were taken out, Gabriel quickly took his chance to run for the lab. He burst out from his hiding spot, running as fast as he could towards the entrance. Another pair of guards spotted his presence and started to make their way towards him, but Castiel quickly intercepted and made short work of them. Still, there suddenly seemed to be more and more demons coming out, and the two lesser angels quickly found themselves occupied as the archangel made the final stretch and burst through the entrance.
Stumbling past the threshold Gabriel stopped to catch his breath, thankful for the fact that at least his stamina was recovering quickly. In a few short moments the archangel managed to stop panting, and Gabriel straightened himself back up, ready to start getting around and sabotage the wards. Before he could even take a step, however-
“The Trickster, I presume.”
Gabriel froze at the voice, turning around to face the now-disappeared entrance and stared in surprise at the familiar figure that stood before him. A figure he hadn't seen since the first night when he returned to this world.
“Raphael,” he whispered back, eyes slowly widening. This was Crowley's place, his base of operations-so what was Raphael of all people doing here?
The elder archangel raised his vessel's head at the mention of his name, dark eyes giving Gabriel a brief once-over. “I should have suspected that something was up when I saw you with the Winchesters,” he started, unblinking. “If I had known you were the Trickster back then, I would have gotten rid of you. To think that even you would side with them.”
Gabriel took a moment to quickly run through what Raphael had said in his head before frowning. “And what about you? You seem to be pretty chummy with the King of Hell, from what I can see.” It was the only plausible explanation as to why, and how, Raphael could be within these wards so easily-no doubt Crowley had modified them for Raphael's access. There was also the fact that Castiel was both Raphael and Crowley's common enemy; the two must have decided on an agreement to take him out. The King of Hell and Heaven's last archangel; Gabriel was really glad now that he had managed to stop Cas from doing his suicide mission.
A flicker of annoyance momentarily crossed Raphael's face, but it quickly disappeared and he was speaking again. “Both of us have a common enemy in Castiel. Both of us agree that it was in our best interest to work together and get rid of him.” He paused deliberately, looking at Gabriel for another moment before continuing. “Especially when he has the Trickster on his side.”
The weight of Raphael's gaze was unmistakable as the elder archangel looked at him, and Gabriel managed a small gulp which did nothing to assuage his fear. Although, if he was hearing things correctly... “How'd you figure out it was me?” Gabriel asked, trying to keep his brother occupied as much as possible. Hopefully the two angels outside would be done soon enough, and then he could get them to skedaddle before things got even more complicated than they already were.
“Your story is not unfamiliar to me,” Raphael replied, voice now taking on a haughtier edge. “There is nobody else who can make the pagans fight alongside each other in the way Crowley described to me. Your affairs with them are hardly a secret.”
So Raphael thought he was actually the real Trickster? Gabriel's mind whirled at this new information, as he tried to devise a way to get out with the assumption that Raphael had made. It was common knowledge that Loki was stronger than any angel in existence, so Raphael wouldn't try to attack him too soon. While the window was still around, Gabriel knew that he needed to escape by hook or by crook; once the elder archangel attacked him, there was no way he was going to get out of this in one piece.
Gabriel shifted slightly, tucking his hands into the pockets of his pants and attempting to look as relaxed as possible, even though he was all tense inside right now. “If you know so much about me, then you should know what'll happen if you don't stand down right now,” he returned. “I don't want anybody to get hurt if I can help it.”
Raphael only took a step closer in return, smiling in a way that only sent chills up Gabriel's spine. “You still think you're so powerful, Trickster? The nameless God, the God without a form. I always knew that it would end like this someday.” The smile grew, dark and chilling. “It's time for you to know your place, child.”
What happened next went far too quickly for Gabriel to register properly. Raphael lunged out without warning, jabbing out something right in Gabriel's direction; there was a familiar voice shouting in his ear, and suddenly Gabriel found himself being shoved down to the ground, the cold metal of the floor soaking into his skin and spreading goosebumps all over as he remained stock still. Not because he was cold, but because he was too stunned by the scene that now stood before his eyes.
In front of him stood Loki, now struggling to stand up as blood dripped from her side and started to pool on the floor below her. From where he was, Gabriel could see something sticking out from her hip, partially covered by the hand that Loki was pressing to her wound in a bid to stop the bleeding. It was clear that she was badly hurt from whatever it was that Raphael did to her, which was something of great concern-there shouldn't be anything that could hurt the Trickster this bad.
Gabriel quickly pulled himself together and moved, picking himself up from the floor as he reached for the girl. “Loki-”
Loki stopped him before he could land his hands on her, turning her head to look at him with weary green eyes and placed her palm over his heart.
“Live,” she whispered, and then there was nothing else but warmth of Grace surging through him, flowing through his veins like cleansing water as voices started to whisper in his ears again, echoing endlessly within his mind. They were voices that he hadn't heard for what seemed like eternity; voices Gabriel didn't know he had missed that much right until now.
It was the voices of the Host.
Raphael's eyes widened the moment Gabriel regained his connection with the Host, disbelief and shock written on his face as the elder archangel looked at him. “You're-”
With his powers now restored, Gabriel quickly moved before Raphael could manage to get over his surprise. He grabbed Loki just as the girl started to crumple to the ground, pulling out all eight of his wings as he took off towards the first place that came into his mind.
Bobby Singer's house.
← eleventh act | twelfth act (part b) →
Gabriel had really hoped that he wouldn’t be here when this happened, but there was no real way for him to get out of it-at least not in his current state. He had expended way too much energy in transporting both him and Castiel around to get the Colt, and then return to where Eve was. It had been hard enough to use his powers in his current state, but to do it while going through Eve’s barriers… pretty much all the Grace he had was gone again, and recharging was going to be a straight bitch to do.
Still, that he could handle. What he couldn’t handle was seeing things quickly breaking down between Castiel and Dean, as soon as the angel had placed him onto the small cot in Bobby’s study.
“Really, Cas?” Dean demanded. “Really? Of all people, Crowley?”
Castiel clenched his jaw, looking straight back at Dean with a glare of his own. “It does not matter now. I have ended my partnership with him.”
Dean let out a hiss of frustration. “That isn’t the point, Cas. Why did you even think that working with Crowley-why did you even work with him?”
“…it seemed like the best option at the time,” the angel returned, much more quietly this time as he turned his gaze away from Dean and looked right at him instead. “I know better now.”
Gabriel stared back for a moment before he shifted to glance at Dean instead, and he watched as the hunter looked between them and quickly put two and two together. “You knew, Gabriel?” he snapped out now. “You knew, and you didn’t tell us?”
The archangel only narrowed his eyes. “It’s up to Cas to tell you about this, Dean,” he replied. “I’ve got no right to interfere in this.”
“Like you didn’t interfere when the Apocalypse happened?” the man shouted back in return. “Or with Eve?”
“They are entirely different things-” he started to retort, but Dean cut him short before Gabriel could say anything more than that.
“You’re just being a fucking coward again, you asshole!” Dean almost roared out then, his eyes blazing in anger. “You’re afraid to stand up to him because you don’t want to lose him! Or were you too busy screwing with Cas to care about anything else?”
Despite knowing that something like that was going to be said, the archangel still couldn’t help but flinch at the words, struck hard by the weight of them. Castiel stepped in soon enough, a seriously displeased expression on his face as he glared at Dean and warned in a dangerously quiet voice. “Do not drag Gabriel into this, Dean. He is not related to this matter.”
Rather than heeding the unspoken warning, it flew right over Dean’s head instead and the hunter snapped right back at Castiel. “How the fuck is he not involved in this? He’s been backing you all this time!”
“Gabriel is the one who taught me otherwise,” the angel returned, soft and quiet but still sounding very, very dangerous. “He has never ‘backed’ me up. When he knew what I was up to, he confronted me himself and made me learn the error of my ways. He has been helping us and aiding us the best he can, despite his condition, and he wore himself out in getting the Colt from its place. Gabriel is doing all he can to stop Crowley, but yet you only see things on the surface and make biased assumptions.” Castiel set his jaw in a firm line as he challenged Dean’s glare with his own as he finished what he wanted to say. “I thought of you as a better man than that, Dean.”
Dean only glowered, giving Cas a brief glare before he turned around. “You’re the one who made the first move, Cas,” he spoke, and this time the anger sounded much more personal, much more hurt. “You started this.”
“And I have ended it, but apparently you are too blind to see that,” Castiel retorted with venom in his voice, and Gabriel decided to keep quiet as the angel bent down and picked him up again. “If this is what you think, then we shall not intrude here any longer.”
Sam snapped his head up at those words, clearly surprised by what Cas had just said. Dean, on the other hand, stayed silent and unmoving, his back still facing towards both angels. Castiel seemed to have taken the lack of action as a response of its own; Gabriel could see something shifting across his face, before Castiel quickly covered it up with a mask of indifference.
“Goodbye, Dean,” he spoke, and before either of the Winchesters could speak Castiel opened his wings and flew both of them away from Sioux Falls.
“Man, that is one bad breakup scene there.”
Gabriel made a sigh of agreement as he leaned back on the couch, wondering when did crappy, overdramatic (as well as unnecessary long-seriously, 787 episodes?) Asian dramas mange to encapsulate his life so well. “Seriously,” he muttered morosely, idly flicking a cola sweet into his mouth as he spoke. “They’re both complete failures in properly talking about their feelings.”
Loki snorted from beside him, her gaze fixed on the television in front of them as the girl channel started to surfed across her home’s cable network once more, after having paused to watch said bad breakup scene earlier. She frowned as she went through some of the later channels and quickly ended up shutting off the television. “Why can’t the good stuff just air the same time that America does?” she grumbled as she tossed the remote onto the table, looking evidently displeased. “I hate this 24 hour wait bullshit that the company pulls here.”
“You could always move,” the archangel pointed out easily.
The Trickster rolled her eyes in response. “And get myself involved in pagan politics?” she went with a snort. “Not a chance, man. I like the easy life here.” To emphasize her point, the girl patted the armrest of her couch, as if to assure the furniture that she would still be around no matter what.
Gabriel rolled his eyes this time, letting out a sound of exasperation as he turned around to glance at the calendar hanging from the nearby windowsill. It had been a while (a bit over a week, to be precise) since Castiel had that big blowout with Dean and subsequently brought both him and Gabriel back to the Trickster’s place in Singapore. Loki had kindly allowed them to stay after the two angels had randomly turned up at her doorstep, and to her credit she didn’t poke or prod in the time Cas hung around and generally did nothing else but mope. In all his time being around, Gabriel didn’t know when he had seen an angel as depressed as Castiel was right there and then.
Still, considering the situation there really wasn’t anything much that he could do; Gabriel did his best though, mostly by sticking around and nudging the angel to eat or drink something every once in a while, at least to feel slightly better. Loki attempted to aid the archangel in that aspect as well, although as much as he did love his sweets he had to stop the girl from feeding Cas things like rock sugar and Hershey’s chocolate syrup that came straight from the bottle (“Hey, do you even know how much a bottle costs around here? It’s a rip-off, I tell you! I’m doing him a favor!”).
They did sleep together a few times, although it was Gabriel who had to do most of the work there. The archangel didn’t mind so much-he had his fair share of this during his somewhat decently long run as Loki-but it still hurt, seeing Cas looking so broken and lost as the angel trembled and shook like a leaf in his arms, making quiet, broken sounds into the skin of Gabriel’s shoulder. The only comfort he could really take from it was that usually Cas was so worn out after, that he fell asleep right after, although Gabriel did worry for a while over that. It was a fact that angels didn’t need to sleep, technically speaking, and while he had been an exception… it took Loki giving the angel a once over to assuage his fears, but once he knew that Cas was alright Gabriel could feel a little better.
This morning, though, Gabriel had woken up to find Cas gone and a note on the bedside table in the angel’s place, informing the archangel that he would be out for a while. The note did fill him with a certain amount of relief, if Gabriel had to admit it; the fact that Castiel was moving around again, being his serious self, at least showed that he was starting to get over it. Or he was just locking it deep, deep down inside his heart. Gabriel sincerely hoped that it wasn’t the latter.
So now here he was in the living room and having channel surfed with Loki; the Trickster now had her attention directed to the two different flyers in her hand which the girl seemed to be mulling over quite seriously. “I wonder if Pizza Hut has any deals on offer…”
The archangel let out a snort. “We should just poof over to the nearest mall,” he suggested. “There’s a whole bunch of them around here, right?”
“Not as much as the east,” Loki replied with another snort of her own, looking up from the flyers. “You should see Tampines; three malls in one spot, man. I don’t know what people were thinking when they did that. Anyway, I wouldn’t suggest poofing to the mall. Sunday crowds are a bitch to get around in.”
“You said the same thing about Saturday,” Gabriel went pointedly.
Loki rolled her eyes once more. “Fine, weekend crowds are a bitch to go through. Happy now?”
“It helps when you actually make decent sense,” the archangel replied with a smirk, quickly evading the cushion that the Trickster promptly lugged in his direction at the response.
“Idiot,” she went, although the fond grin on her face completely ruined whatever venom that had been in her voice.
Gabriel threw the cushion back at Loki. “You’d have me no other way.”
The girl made a small, amused sound as she caught the cushion and placed it back in its original spot on the couch. “I see your giant ego has been inflated again. I didn’t know sleeping with Cas could give you such a boost in confidence.”
Whatever good mood the archangel had instantly dissipated at that comment. Gabriel instantly scowled, looking none too happy with said comment as he sagged back into the couch. “It’s nothing like that,” he eventually muttered, keeping his gaze set on the blank television.
There was a moment’s pause before Loki let out a soft sigh from beside him. “Sorry, Gabe. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” She shifted around after saying that, moving so that she was facing the archangel properly and could now look at him without the need to twist her head around. “How is Cas, anyway? I felt him leave this morning.”
“He left a note. Said that he’d be out for a while,” Gabriel replied with a shrug, turning his gaze to stare out of the window, and to the apartment standing beside the one Loki lived in. “It’s good that he’s going out again. Means he’s starting to get himself back together.”
The girl let out a hum of agreement to the comment. “I sure hope so too,” she added, following Gabriel’s gaze to the window. Both Tricksters remained quiet for a while after that, letting the silence fill in the blanks for them where words failed to.
It was odd to be doing this again after so long, Gabriel mentally mused to himself. He always had a habit of having his moments of silence in Heaven, a reprieve from all the fighting and backstabbing that his brothers did to each other that did nothing but ruin the peace they all shared once upon a time. When he fled from his home to stay on Earth, things hadn’t been much better either-Earth was a ball of chaos and disorder, a complete difference to what Heaven once was, and above all of that pandemonium stood the Trickster, back then with bright pink hair that was crusted with dried blood and inhumanly blue eyes.
In the beginning, he had followed her out of curiosity-tales of the Trickster were wild and varied across Heaven, whispered in stories that few could put stock in. The story of a God who had been banished to the Earth and chained with humans, the tales about a nameless God who was the equal and direct opposite of their Father; who could ever believe in something like that? And now that Gabriel was seeing her in the flesh… well, curiosity had always been one of his stronger impulses.
So he had followed her, Heaven’s Messenger after the wayward Trickster, and he watched as chaos followed in her footsteps. He had watched as she razed Pompeii down to the ground and ended up fleeing from the terrible sight that washed before his eyes. Even as an archangel he knew that his power was nothing compared to hers; to her he was just like how humans were to angels, and Gabriel knew better than to get in her way, even as he continued to tail her in the following centuries-except much more carefully this time.
He had thought he was careful then, making sure that he didn’t give any indication of himself away-which was why, when she called him out one day out of the blue, it had done nothing but frighten Gabriel and made the archangel expect the worst. Now though, in retrospect, considering the fact that he was tailing the Trickster, it should have been obvious that she already noticed him from the start and if she wanted to, would have gotten rid of him a long time ago.
I’m pretty certain that one of Heaven’s finest should have better things to do than follow me around for the last couple of centuries, he could still recall the words that she had spoken back then. Are things upstairs that boring these days?
From there it had been… a rather strange friendship of sorts, if Gabriel had to find a way to describe it. The Trickster’s title alone was more than enough to inspire fear in everybody, but yet it was hard to see at first glance just how she could be the Adversary, even though he had witnessed the destruction she wrought down upon Pompeii. She had taken him under her wing and let him tag along with her as she wandered around the world, watching it shift and evolve even as she remained as a constant, unchanging fixture.
In a way, perhaps that was why he hadn’t been so surprised when she had accepted the offer to head the pagans and stand on as their impartial judge. Unlike all of them she had no origin to worry about, no believers or religion that would put her in any difficult position. She was the nameless God, the God without a form or origin or anything at all that could identify her. It did make sense that she would be the best choice for something like that. What did surprise him, was what she had done right after the position had been given to her.
Starting from right now, you’re going to be Loki. And just like that, he was no longer just Gabriel, not simply the Messenger who had fled out of Heaven to roam the Earth-he was Loki the Trickster; a Trickster, one of the first to live under the Trickster’s Law. She had given him a new life and granted him a freedom that Heaven would never have allowed him, and from then on Gabriel knew that he owed a lot of things to her. She had already given him so much, and more, and then now…
Loki shifted beside him at that moment, cutting Gabriel off from his thoughts. Sagging back even more against the couch, the girl closed her eyes and sighed out loudly. “I’m sorry that it turned out this way for both of you. I wish it could be otherwise.”
Gabriel snorted quietly at those words. “It could have been worse,” he simply went in return, remembering what Loki had said to him back after the meeting with the pagans. “At least now it’s certain that Cas and Crowley aren’t so keen to be study partners anymore.” The demon had always been one for his own gain, working for his own survival and power with little regard to anything else; there was no way that the partnership that Cas had with him would ever work out well in the end.
“Still,” the girl muttered, opening her eyes to stare at the blank television. “I really hope that Cas is alright.”
“He’ll get through it,” Gabriel assured the other, his mind flashing back to his time back in Heaven, when Castiel had been his garrison’s best and most sought out strategist-recalling his passion and his unshakable will, two things that had still remained in the angel even until now. “He’s much better than letting himself mope around.”
Despite having said that, Gabriel still couldn’t help but worry as the day continued to pass, and there was still no sign of Castiel to be seen or felt at all. He did trust that the angel would know better than to do anything foolish… but then again, there was no real way of telling just what Cas might do these days; things had changed far too much since the would-be Apocalypse for the archangel to actually know just what went through Castiel’s mind nowadays. As much as he wished it would be otherwise, Gabriel had to admit that things had never been the same since then-this was a world he had never been prepared for, a time he had not seen coming at all. This was now a time when fate and destiny had been torn down, leaving nothing but freedom and choice. It was the ultimate haven… or perhaps the beginning of absolute chaos. There was no real way to tell which was which now.
Funny, that’s the only thing I’m certain about, the archangel mused darkly to himself, as he glanced up towards the clock hanging from the wall opposite him. Three hours into the next day and Castiel still hadn’t returned; Gabriel would be lying if he said he wasn't extremely worried right now. Considering how things were going at this moment, it was only all too easy to imagine Crowley catching the angel off-guard-or worse, Raphael…
Just as that thought came to mind, the familiar sound of beating wings came from the space beside him, and Gabriel instantly turned his head around, his mouth already starting to open. “Cas-”
The archangel stopped when he found himself staring at the figure of Balthazar instead. The angel flashed a wry smile, opting not to say anything as he reached out instead and grabbed Gabriel by his arm. The world shifted around them before Gabriel had a chance to say anything, flashing to wherever Balthazar had decided to fly to as his destination.
He pulled back once they had landed, scowling just a little at Balthazar as he spoke. “Bal, what the hell are you even-”
“…Gabriel?”
Turning his head at that call, the archangel's eyes widened when he quickly made out (there was sunlight again-he must be back in the States) the tired figure of Castiel sitting on a stool nearby, looking grim and somehow none too pleased about Gabriel's appearance in the place. The angel looked at him for a moment, before transferring his gaze over to Balthazar, who only shrugged nonchalantly at the frown that Castiel was sending him right now.
“I thought that giving you a little moral support would be beneficial,” was all that he said in response.
Castiel closed his eyes at the answer, letting out a weary sigh as he sagged down further on the stool. “We agreed not to bring Gabriel into this, Balthazar.”
Into what now? The archangel wondered quietly as he watched Balthazar shrug once more and heard his flippant reply. “He's not really into this if we don't tell him how you're about to go on a suicide mission, yes?”
Suicide-wait, what?
“What?” Gabriel went, eyes going wide as he looked at the two angels, hoping that he hadn't heard it right the first time round. Did Balthazar seriously just say suicide mission?
Castiel instantly threw a scowl at the other angel. “Balthazar,” he started warningly.
“Oops,” Balthazar put on what was possibly the worst expression of false surprise ever in the history of mankind, arms and shoulders set in the universal language of 'I don't know'. “Was I not supposed to say how you plan to storm Crowley's lab alone and most likely march to your own death? Because I think I just said it.” He shrugged yet again. “Oops.”
Gabriel looked right at Castiel then, feeling a frown starting to form on his face. “Cas-”
The angel held up a hand to stop the archangel from speaking any further than that. “Don't stop me, Gabriel,” he went, grim determination already written across his face. “What has happened with Crowley is my fault; I will take responsibility for my actions.”
Father, was Cas that set on emulating Dean Winchester? “Taking responsibility doesn't mean throwing yourself into a freaking suicide mission,” Gabriel hissed out, wondering when things had become this bad. “There are other ways to solve this problem, Cas.”
Castiel, however, was not convinced. “There is no time. We have to stop Crowley before he opens Purgatory.”
“I know,” the archangel returned. “But things are not going to be better, even if you do a suicide mission. There's another way around this. There's always another way.”
The angel only gave him a brief glare at the words, jaw clenched. “You didn't seem so sure of that during the Apocalypse.”
Gabriel flinched at the response, completely taken aback by it. Of all the things to have been said... “That's a different thing, Cas.”
“Because it was destined?” Castiel snapped back, eyes flashing in barely-restrained anger. “Because you believed that it couldn't be changed? Because it has changed, and we proved that destiny isn't absolute. You were just tired of seeing Michael and Lucifer battling each other. I am just tired of having to keep losing the people closest to me. I just want this all to be over, in the same way that you once did.” He looked away then, refusing to look Gabriel in the eye even as he continued to speak. “I tried to make Heaven better. I attempted to show what free will was to the other angels. But they didn't understand, and then Raphael beat me to an inch from death and told me that he wanted to bring back the Apocalypse. He said that he would kill me if I tried to resist him.”
Gabriel knew that he should say something, offer some words in order to give Castiel some peace of mind-but he couldn't find the words to say, unsure of what could even be spoken to the angel. All he could do was to simply listen as Castiel all but let out everything that he had been holding back for what had seemed to be a long, long time.
“I have been trying to do what I can, what I must do in order to preserve everything that has been fought for,” the angel went, and young as he was by the standards of almost all the other angels, Gabriel couldn’t help but hear the note of weariness in Castiel’s voice, the tone of one who had seen and heard and experienced far too much-more than what he could have ever wished for. “I have been trying to stop Raphael from unleashing Apocalypse again and attempting to keep peace up in Heaven. I have been trying to do my best to do what is right, but I have no idea what is right and what is wrong any more here.” He looked back at Gabriel then, and in that moment the archangel could see just how lost Castiel was, to see the hopelessness and desperation painted on his face and showing so blatantly to the world. “Tell me, Gabriel, please. Just what do I have to do?”
And wasn’t that the question everybody wished they had an answer for? Gabriel closed his eyes, trying to think and put his thoughts in order. In a way, he couldn’t fault Cas for his line of thought-after all, he had gone through the same thing as well. In fact, if he had to be honest with himself, he was still going through it; even now, he still had no idea just what he was doing. He was helping Castiel, trying to stop Purgatory from being opened… but for what reason? That answer still eluded him, no matter how much he tried to find one he could settle on.
But right now, this wasn’t about him-this was about Cas, and the ways that he could help the angel. Gabriel opened back his eyes, looking at Castiel and regarded him with a quiet, contemplative look. “I can’t answer that for you, Cas,” he replied, nothing but honestly in his voice. “Nobody can. You need to find the answer yourself.” Funny how all the answers can come for others so easily, when he doesn’t have them for himself.
Castiel looked at him for a few moments before he lowered his gaze, glancing down to the floor instead. A tense moment hung in the air between them, every second a countdown towards what the angel’s decision would turn out to be like.
Balthazar broke the silence eventually, shifting on his foot as he looked at Castiel and asked the question. “So, what’s it going to be? Are you still going, or are you staying instead?”
Gabriel held his breath as Cas raised his head back up, blue eyes darting between them for a few short seconds before landing his gaze squarely on the archangel.
“I think,” Castiel started, slowly and carefully. “That we should go and scout out Crowley’s lab, and then return to plan on what to do next.”
Gabriel instantly deflated at that, sagging as he let out a loud sigh of relief and tension drained out from his body. “Yeah,” he replied, and there was no way to hide the small smile that crossed his face. “Yeah, we can do that.”
They flew over to Crowley’s lab as soon as they were ready-or more accurately, Castiel and Balthazar flew over with Gabriel tagging alongside them, since he was still recovering after all the Grace he had to expend back during the showdown with Eve. It was going to be a while before the archangel could regain even a fraction of his former strength, a fact that Gabriel wasn't all that pleased about. Still, there wasn't anything he could do about it; all that he could do was to simply wait until it did all come back to him.
For now, what was more important was to find a way to stop Crowley without jeopardizing anybody, most of all Castiel. The three of them crouched behind some rubble that stood not too far from the abandoned lab that Crowley had converted into his own place of research. From where they hid, it was easy enough to make out the guards that were stationed at areas around the building, along with the various Enochian wards that were scrawled across the walls, the sigils pulsing a strange, eerie light.
The three of them ducked down as the guards started to move, and Gabriel turned his attention to the two angels, quickly speaking up before Castiel could suggest something possibly stupid and suicidal (for him). “I've got an idea.”
Balthazar snorted quietly. “Of course you do,” he muttered, voice betraying the amusement that his face managed to not show.
Gabriel gave the angel a brief glare at that, before he turned his attention to Cas. “I'll slip around the guards and go sabotage the wards from inside. Once they fall, the both of you jump in and we'll try to get our Eve and get her out. Between the three of us, there shouldn't be too much of a problem.” Regardless of his current condition, there still weren’t that many things in the world that could take out an archangel. True, he might have to get a little dirty, but it wasn't as if he hadn't gone through-or even done-worse things already.
Castiel took a moment to properly digest the plan given. “There are many demons patrolling the area,” he started after a pause, tilting his head. “How do you plan to avoid them?”
He had to admit that the angel had a point there. With that many guards patrolling around, there was no way Gabriel could slip into the building so easily, much less without meeting with resistance. They couldn't afford that. Thinking back to what he had seen earlier, Gabriel attempted to come up with a new plan that would be far more workable but with no real success.
Cas took the ongoing silence as his cue to speak up. “I have a plan.”
Balthazar rolled his eyes. “It's time for the kamikaze tactic then, I see,” he spoke up, voice dry. “Excellent.”
The angel looked at his companion with a look that betrayed his confusion, but didn't question the other's words. Instead he looked over their cover, to study the patrolling demons for another moment, before he turned back to both of them and started to talk again. “Balthazar and I will distract the guards, and Gabriel will get past them while we're fighting them. If it’s possible, we'll try to keep the demons off Gabriel for as long as possible until he gets to the wards. Once they're gone, I will get Gabriel and we'll make our way to Crowley.”
“It all sounds so simple when you put it like that,” Balthazar remarked, sarcasm still dripping from his words. Despite the tone though, Gabriel could already see the flash of steel that glinted from the angel blade that he had already brought out; he was more than ready to strike once things were in action.
And when even Balthazar was ready and going, there was no way that Gabriel could oppose now. The archangel glanced between the other two for another moment before he sighed and nodded, resigning himself to Castiel's tactic. So much for the clean and easy way.
Castiel nodded back, acknowledging Gabriel's agreement as he followed Balthazar and pulled out his own sword. The blade gleamed as it slipped into the physical plane, taking on a definite form from a Grace-mixed intangible one. For a moment, seeing the two angels summoning out their blades did make Gabriel miss his own; he still wasn't able to bring it out from him, as weak as he still was. The archangel figured that he would only ever be able to summon it when he was actually a proper angel once again.
And only Father knows when that will be, he finished sourly in his head before shifting, moving closer to the edge. He kept one eye on Castiel and Balthazar, who were preparing to move, watching as the two angels spread out their wings; pure white for Cas and a faded ashen gray for Balthazar. Swords gripped tight in their hands, Gabriel gave them one more glance before nodding, giving them the go ahead to start moving.
Cas was the one who went first as soon as the signal was given; with a beat of his wings the angel moved, flying to right behind one of the demons and promptly stabbed his blade straight through the demon's heart. The demon didn't even have a moment to register what had happened before Grace burned through the veins of the human it was possessing, tearing right into the demon and killing it instantaneously with a brief flash of light from the vessel's eyes and mouth.
A second demon had just rounded the corner when the light came, and instantly it was quickly running towards Castiel, mouth open in order to start shouting. “In-”
Balthazar made his move before the demon could say any more than that, forgoing his blade entirely as he burned the demon out with the power of his Grace alone. Unlike Castiel, he did it with much more subtlety and efficiency, taking out the demon with minimal fanfare-none of which surprised Gabriel; there was a reason why Balthazar had always been regarded as one of the best scouts amongst the Host back up in Heaven.
As soon as both of the demons were taken out, Gabriel quickly took his chance to run for the lab. He burst out from his hiding spot, running as fast as he could towards the entrance. Another pair of guards spotted his presence and started to make their way towards him, but Castiel quickly intercepted and made short work of them. Still, there suddenly seemed to be more and more demons coming out, and the two lesser angels quickly found themselves occupied as the archangel made the final stretch and burst through the entrance.
Stumbling past the threshold Gabriel stopped to catch his breath, thankful for the fact that at least his stamina was recovering quickly. In a few short moments the archangel managed to stop panting, and Gabriel straightened himself back up, ready to start getting around and sabotage the wards. Before he could even take a step, however-
“The Trickster, I presume.”
Gabriel froze at the voice, turning around to face the now-disappeared entrance and stared in surprise at the familiar figure that stood before him. A figure he hadn't seen since the first night when he returned to this world.
“Raphael,” he whispered back, eyes slowly widening. This was Crowley's place, his base of operations-so what was Raphael of all people doing here?
The elder archangel raised his vessel's head at the mention of his name, dark eyes giving Gabriel a brief once-over. “I should have suspected that something was up when I saw you with the Winchesters,” he started, unblinking. “If I had known you were the Trickster back then, I would have gotten rid of you. To think that even you would side with them.”
Gabriel took a moment to quickly run through what Raphael had said in his head before frowning. “And what about you? You seem to be pretty chummy with the King of Hell, from what I can see.” It was the only plausible explanation as to why, and how, Raphael could be within these wards so easily-no doubt Crowley had modified them for Raphael's access. There was also the fact that Castiel was both Raphael and Crowley's common enemy; the two must have decided on an agreement to take him out. The King of Hell and Heaven's last archangel; Gabriel was really glad now that he had managed to stop Cas from doing his suicide mission.
A flicker of annoyance momentarily crossed Raphael's face, but it quickly disappeared and he was speaking again. “Both of us have a common enemy in Castiel. Both of us agree that it was in our best interest to work together and get rid of him.” He paused deliberately, looking at Gabriel for another moment before continuing. “Especially when he has the Trickster on his side.”
The weight of Raphael's gaze was unmistakable as the elder archangel looked at him, and Gabriel managed a small gulp which did nothing to assuage his fear. Although, if he was hearing things correctly... “How'd you figure out it was me?” Gabriel asked, trying to keep his brother occupied as much as possible. Hopefully the two angels outside would be done soon enough, and then he could get them to skedaddle before things got even more complicated than they already were.
“Your story is not unfamiliar to me,” Raphael replied, voice now taking on a haughtier edge. “There is nobody else who can make the pagans fight alongside each other in the way Crowley described to me. Your affairs with them are hardly a secret.”
So Raphael thought he was actually the real Trickster? Gabriel's mind whirled at this new information, as he tried to devise a way to get out with the assumption that Raphael had made. It was common knowledge that Loki was stronger than any angel in existence, so Raphael wouldn't try to attack him too soon. While the window was still around, Gabriel knew that he needed to escape by hook or by crook; once the elder archangel attacked him, there was no way he was going to get out of this in one piece.
Gabriel shifted slightly, tucking his hands into the pockets of his pants and attempting to look as relaxed as possible, even though he was all tense inside right now. “If you know so much about me, then you should know what'll happen if you don't stand down right now,” he returned. “I don't want anybody to get hurt if I can help it.”
Raphael only took a step closer in return, smiling in a way that only sent chills up Gabriel's spine. “You still think you're so powerful, Trickster? The nameless God, the God without a form. I always knew that it would end like this someday.” The smile grew, dark and chilling. “It's time for you to know your place, child.”
What happened next went far too quickly for Gabriel to register properly. Raphael lunged out without warning, jabbing out something right in Gabriel's direction; there was a familiar voice shouting in his ear, and suddenly Gabriel found himself being shoved down to the ground, the cold metal of the floor soaking into his skin and spreading goosebumps all over as he remained stock still. Not because he was cold, but because he was too stunned by the scene that now stood before his eyes.
In front of him stood Loki, now struggling to stand up as blood dripped from her side and started to pool on the floor below her. From where he was, Gabriel could see something sticking out from her hip, partially covered by the hand that Loki was pressing to her wound in a bid to stop the bleeding. It was clear that she was badly hurt from whatever it was that Raphael did to her, which was something of great concern-there shouldn't be anything that could hurt the Trickster this bad.
Gabriel quickly pulled himself together and moved, picking himself up from the floor as he reached for the girl. “Loki-”
Loki stopped him before he could land his hands on her, turning her head to look at him with weary green eyes and placed her palm over his heart.
“Live,” she whispered, and then there was nothing else but warmth of Grace surging through him, flowing through his veins like cleansing water as voices started to whisper in his ears again, echoing endlessly within his mind. They were voices that he hadn't heard for what seemed like eternity; voices Gabriel didn't know he had missed that much right until now.
It was the voices of the Host.
Raphael's eyes widened the moment Gabriel regained his connection with the Host, disbelief and shock written on his face as the elder archangel looked at him. “You're-”
With his powers now restored, Gabriel quickly moved before Raphael could manage to get over his surprise. He grabbed Loki just as the girl started to crumple to the ground, pulling out all eight of his wings as he took off towards the first place that came into his mind.
Bobby Singer's house.
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