gabriel_bigbang: Finding Faith: Chapter 3
Title: Finding Faith
Author: luna_del_cielo
Artist: yanyann
Beta: Greywizard with special help from Shulik / shulik1
Genre/Pairing: Gen with some mild Gabriel/Sineya
Rating: T
Word count: 15, 753
Warnings/Spoilers: Violence. Crossover with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, spoilers for Season 3.
Summary: Prince of Fire, Messenger of God, Angel of Death: Gabriel has been all these things, until one day his charge, Sineya, is violated in the cruelest of ways. Grief derived from this action and the hatred that divides his family ultimately drives him from Heaven. But he continues to observe the Daughters of Sineya - the Vampire Slayers - and upon the day Faith Lehane is Called, the archangel finally sees his opportunity to make amends.
The years passed like hours as Gabriel embraced his new life.
He was Loki, Trickster God of the Norse Pantheon. Sly, clever, mischievous; he used his insight as Gabriel the Archangel to see into the hearts of humans and judge them ruthlessly. However, whereas before he would have released a rain of fire upon the wicked, now he followed the rules of a trickster. Creative schemes were set in place to teach these foolish humans a lesson. For the fat and cruel lord of the land, he made all food taste like ash. Abusive husbands were beaten by giant monsters. Vain women grew unsightly sores on their face. Liars’ tongues became forked like a snake’s.
It was frustrating at times to not give in to his archangel instincts and smite these sinful creatures in the name of his Father, but he could no longer be Gabriel. No, he was Loki.
Other pagan gods were surprised to learn that Loki had been powerful enough to free himself from the rock. As Loki, he just shrugged his shoulders with a twinkle in his eye. Sigyn was released from her duty of caring for him, although she protested. However, he set her up with a god from the Celtic pantheon, Sucellus, who was a nice, fun guy and she begrudgingly agreed to leave Loki, for which he was grateful. Sigyn was the only pagan that knew Loki the best, so she could not spend time with this new version of Loki, lest she become suspicious as to why he was no longer exactly the same in personality.
Others did notice it vaguely, of course. Luckily, he was able to explain the changes away as going mad from poisonous venom, a delightful scapegoat for his peculiar behavior, such as not eating human flesh. Even though he was disobeying his Father by leaving the Host of Heaven, he would still not consume the flesh of one of his creations. In fact, he did not even eat animal flesh. Instead, he lived off of honey, mead, and other sweets, a delicious combination.
Throughout the years, he continued his watch over the Daughters of Sineya. They were governed by the Watcher’s Council, a group of arrogant men who viewed the girls as tools of war.
It sickened him.
However, he could play no tricks upon them, for they did have a purpose. Without this group that was descended from the Shadow Men, there would be no one to oversee the slayers and help guide their path.
So, Gabriel got creative. Shortly after his transformation, he found a group of women in his (now) native Scandinavia, powerful earth witches, and came to them one night during the full moon. Gabriel explained to them about the watchers who watched the slayers, but that there was no one to watch the watchers. These women were strong and proud; they understood what it was like for man to dominate women, and they disliked it vigorously. They pledged to become the Guardians of the slayers and to watch over them in secret.
Pleased with their oaths, Gabriel granted them with the immortality they needed to watch over the slayers for eternity. He taught them more magic and the craft of forging weapons for their charges; for one particular scythe, he even added the smallest amount of his Grace to it.
That was no laughing matter, to give up a piece of his Grace. It had taken serious consideration. An angel’s Grace was its entire being; cutting off a piece was severely painful and, thereafter, an angel would always know where that piece of his Grace lay. Had his brethren known he had done this, they would have called him mad and locked him away.
But Gabriel knew better. He wasn’t mad, only still anguished by the young mortal girl he had loved and lost to the Shadow Men. He had not been able to protect her then, but he would give what he could to ensure her daughters were better protected, for they lived a short and difficult life.
Yet he never approached any of the young slayers that passed like shooting stars through the world, burning fast and fierce through life. To do so was to only invite disaster. Gabriel could see a flicker of Sineya’s spirit within each of them, and while its light drew him in like a moth, he knew he would be burned if he got too close.
So he stayed away, for as long as possible.
Until one day he couldn’t.
He was in Boston and Christmas was approaching.
Gabriel enjoyed Boston, especially during the holidays. The highly religious city, with its dozens of cathedrals, was soothing during his moments of loneliness; even though he had several ‘acquaintances’ and romantic interests within the various pantheons, Gabriel had never tried to make to connect with many - besides Kali, that is, and for whatever reason, she hadn’t been speaking to him for the last hundred years. That was quite common, to be ignored by her after one of her hissy fits, but he certainly didn’t like it. Besides Kali, however, Gabriel feared getting to close to the others, lest they suspect his true identity or - perhaps even worse - he got brought into another earth-shattering family drama.
No, it was easier to be alone…even if it wasn’t very fun.
So today, he was sitting outside Faneuil Hall people-watching as major Christmas shopping was being accomplished. Several street musicians played carols in the square and Gabriel just leaned back and relaxed as he listened to the music. As he began to doze off, he felt the vibrations of a heartbeat run through him. Alert, he opened his eyes and strained his senses. There was something - someone - nearby. A new life. Its soul tugged on the string that tied him to all the Daughters of Sineya.
Gabriel closed his eyes and listened to the tiny heartbeat. Yes, she wasn’t too far from here. Immediately, he felt the sense of happiness that always accompanied noticing a new daughter of Sineya, yet then he also felt melancholy sweep through him. This girl’s life would be a hard one, harder than most; he could feel that much.
Typically, Gabriel would go about his day -- hell, he would usually pop over to the other side of the earth -- but he also felt something special about this girl. Her spirit was pulling him in like a magnet and after thousands of years of ignoring the slayers, he felt himself teleporting to her.
The hospital room was small with fading wallpaper in a bad part of South Boston. The emaciated woman, clearly a substance abuser, was asleep in her bed with a small bundle in her arms. Smiling - for Gabriel naturally loved children - he crept closer and lightly pulled the blanket back to reveal the newborn babe.
A lopsided smile crossed his face as he tenderly caressed the little girl’s cheek. She made a cooing noise and he felt his heart melt at the sight. She was a sweet one, this little girl. How strange to know that one day her sweetness would likely get lost as she became a killer.
She opened her sleepy eyes and looked at him. Although newborn human eyes were unable to truly see a person, he could have sworn she was really watching him right now. Her dark brown eyes took him back to another time and another place millennia ago, to a time when he first laid eyes on Sineya’s newborn form, and years later, when he realized he loved her.
Gasping, Gabriel reeled back from the child. Her mother, perhaps sensing the motion, woke up and whispered as she hugged her child close to her breast. “Faith.”
Gabriel shot out of there like lightning.
He purposely did not return to Boston for nine years. Gabriel’s Grace itself had hurt at seeing the resemblance between little Faith and Sineya, and he had no intention of getting his heart ripped out again by a slayer - both figuratively and literally.
But that did not mean, throughout his hundreds of tricks and thousands of hours, he did not think of her. No, her name had become like a mental refrain of his own personal ‘This is the Song that Never Ends’. He hated it. Hated how he yearned to see her again, hated how he felt a hope at a chance to make amends to Sineya by caring for this girl that contained a speck of her essence, hated how it brought him back to painful memories.
A trick had called him back to Boston in March, 1990. The curator of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum was an arrogant asshole who actually went around drinking tea with his pinky up in the air. His fellow trickster, Coyote of the Native American pantheon, had given him a head’s up - Coyote hated the east coast and preferred to avoid it if possible, yet felt that someone had to give this man his just desserts. So Gabriel, ever aware of Faith’s presence in the city, ventured there to have some fun. As Coyote had stated, Mr. Charles Finnigan was a right bastard who abused his employees and thought that because he ran one of the top museums in the world, he could have anything he wanted.
Well, he would soon be proved wrong.
Gabriel snapped into existence two men dressed as police officers- they were not real men, more like really good holograms - and then dressed as a cop himself. On March 18th, they marched into the museum, handcuffed the guards, and stole $500 million dollars of art - thirteen pieces. It was the biggest art theft in history and it had Loki laughing for days as he watched the red-faced sputtering curator attempt to explain how his security had not been good enough.
Of course, he should have left Boston as soon as the theft was done, but he always had to sit around to enjoy the aftermath of his shenanigans.
Being so close to the young slayer’s presence turned out to be more than he could bear. Gabriel couldn’t refrain himself - he had to see her.
She was in a fourth grade classroom, surrounded by bright pictures on the wall, a frustrated teacher, and laughing children. The children were laughing, incidentally, because of her.
“Faith Lehane! Now I asked you to read out loud, not engage in tomfoolery!” an extremely uptight and elderly teacher chastised.
Invisible to human eyes, Gabriel walked closer to Faith. She was dressed in second-hand clothes and had wild, curly brown hair. She was crouching over a boy who sat in front of her with her index fingers wiggling above her head like rabbit ears and speaking in a poor imitation of a Dracula-like voice. “I am Bunnicula, the vampire vabbit of dooooom!” The children continued laughing and Gabriel noticed they all had the book ‘Bunnicula’ on their desk, a book with cover art that featured a rabbit with flowing red eyes and two fangs instead of buck teeth.
“Ah!” the boy mock-screamed before subsiding into giggles.
“I vant to drink your bloooood!” Faith leered as she began bunny hopping around the room, much to the enjoyment of her peers.
Gabriel burst out laughing. This kid was a hoot and her class clown act reminded him of himself. Even funnier was the fact that she’d be staking vamps in a few years, not pretending to be one.
Then the oddest thing happened while he was laughing - she looked at him. Even though no one could see him, she was looking straight at him with a curious expression.
Gabriel froze and Faith looked away when her teacher snapped at her. “That’s it! You lose five stickers today, Faith! Now go sit down, or it’ll be ten.”
Faith faltered for a moment as she glanced at her teacher, and then she lowered her head as she walked over to her desk. “Hard to lose stickers when I don’t even have any,” she grumbled with her hands in her pockets.
She glanced around the room as she sat down, but she didn’t appear to see him again. Honestly, he wasn’t quite sure if she had really ‘seen’ him in the first place or if she had just felt his presence. Regardless, it was troubling. After Sineya, Gabriel had sworn not to directly intervene with any humans, unless it was one of his tricks. Other than his victims and the first few years with the Guardians, he never spent time with humans - only bad things could follow from such interactions.
It frightened him that she could sense him. Gabriel didn’t know what it meant and didn’t want to know.
After having a taste of her presence, Gabriel couldn’t stay away from this particular Daughter of Sineya for long. Two years later, he returned to South Boston to spy on her in her sixth-grade classes. She was just as boisterous as before and clearly reveled in the attention given by her peers.
Unfortunately, she also seemed to particularly enjoy attention from her male peers.
Gabriel watched as she dragged her ‘boyfriend,’ Tommy Barker, into a custodial closet and began making out with the eighth grade boy. It appalled him that Faith was engaging in such promiscuous behavior so early in life. Her body had developed much more in the past two years, enough so that she looked more several years older than she really was. When the boy went to grab her breast, a cold fury blew through Gabriel and he shape-shifted into the school janitor and jerked the closet door open.
“What the ‘ell you kids doin’?” Gabriel growled in a successful impersonation of the cantankerous old janitor.
“I-I-I was just looking for something,” Tommy explained nervously as Faith stared at Gabriel with innocent doe eyes.
Glaring at Faith, he ordered her to get the hell back to class. Once they were alone, Gabriel allowed a sinister air to surround him and Tommy. “Now, don’t think I don’t know what you were doin’, boy. Tryin’ to feel up an innocent girl, who the ‘ell do you think you are?”
“She’s not innocent,” Tommy snorted in derision. “I heard she let my friend’s high school brother get to third base!”
In a fit of rage, Gabriel yanked the boy up from his shirt collar and held him up in the air. “Spreadin’ rumors ‘bout young ladies is most uncalled for, Mr. Barker. Continue to do so and you will regret it.” Gabriel shook him for good measure and the boy came close to tears. “Respect women and don’t even think ‘bout touchin’ one without permission, ya hear me?”
Tommy nodded vigorously and Gabriel dropped him, smirking as the brat scampered off. However, this new bit of information worried him. Just what was Faith getting herself involved with? He knew the complexities of the human mind and more often than not understood them. If Faith was engaging in promiscuity at the tender age of eleven, then it was the result of someone else in her life.
By his Father, if he discovered that someone was abusing Faith, he would rip them to pieces.
Gabriel didn’t even bother to remind himself his promise of not intervening with humans - his wrath had been awakened and there was no stopping him.
He followed Faith as she walked home from school. The girl was by herself and she would occasionally steal glances over her shoulder. Whether this was because she felt his presence or she was trained to be careful in this low-income neighborhood covered with dilapidated housing, he wasn’t quite sure. Finally, she made her way to a housing project that smelt like human and animal waste and featured several scuttling cockroaches.
Her apartment was small with ancient couches and scuffed furniture crowding the area. Faith glanced around with a look of disgust before she tossed her backpack in her room and then began picking up a dozen ‘Natural Light’ beer cans that cluttered the coffee table. When that task was finished, she opened the fridge and crinkled her nose at the prominence of beer cans and lack of food that it hosted. With a sigh, she grabbed a slice of stale bread, heated it in the toaster, and plopped down in front of the television.
Gabriel was disgusted by the child’s living arrangements. He remembered thinking that the mother he had seen in the hospital was a substance abuser, but he just could not understand how she couldn’t better herself after the birth of her daughter. Experiences like this squeezed hatred out of him like a sponge, and he felt the call to do justice beckon.
But he would wait, for now. He tried to calm himself by observing the girl watch TV and then attempt to do her homework - although after a while she got frustrated and gave up. As night fell, she prepared for bed and he watched in silence as she stared out the window crying. Gabriel did not know what made her cry, but he knew he despised the sight of it.
Around three in the morning, loud noises in the living room startled Faith and she woke up with wary eyes. Gabriel sat, invisible, at the end of her bed; unable to tear his eyes away from the peace that lay over the girl when she slept.
“No, no, no,” she whispered to herself as she heard a loud male voice. Fear laced her voice and Gabriel’s archangel instincts came back in full force - his inclination to smite whatever cause this reaction within Faith was difficult to disregard.
The door banged open and they both could see Faith’s mother sprawled, drunk, on the couch. A man with scraggly facial hair with his huge girth barely covered by a leather motorcycle jacket stood in the doorway with a knowing grin.
“Mommy’s passed out, Faithy. You know what that means - if she can’t be awake to cover our ‘business transaction’,” he waggled his eyebrows suggestively, “you know I gotta get it from somewhere.”
Faith shrank back and held the thin pink blanket to her chin. “Please, Jack, no,” she whispered in a little girl’s voice - a voice so different from the one she displayed in public.
Jack stepped forward unsteadily and began loosening his belt buckle. “Come now, Faithy. You have fun, don’t you? Yeah, I’m loads of fun,” he snickered.
Rage blasted through Gabriel and he didn’t even think before acting. He touched the tips of his index and middle finger to Faith’s temple to render her unconscious and then he materialized in front of Jack and shoved him against the wall, cracking the plaster.
“Oh my God, what the Hell?” Jack shouted fearfully.
Gabriel drank in that fear and then poured it back into the foul man. “Trust me, you aren’t worthy to use the Lord’s name but you will be seeing Hell shortly.” In one violent motion, Gabriel tore off the man’s penis and held it in front of Jack’s face. He rolled his eyes in disgust as the man started crying and screaming in pain.
“Honestly, Jack, you can violate little girls, but you can’t take a little bit of pain of your own?” At those vicious words Gabriel teleported them to the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Sidney. They hovered in the air and Gabriel took pleasure in hearing Jack’s screams of terror as he dangled uselessly from the angel’s grasp.
“Please let me go! What the hell are you?” Jack screamed as Gabriel shook him. Blood sprinkled into the sunlit waves and Gabriel waited patiently for shark fins to start appearing.
“Oh God. Not sharks. Please, this has to be some sort of dream,” Jack cried as Gabriel skimmed the wretched man over the surface of the water, much to the excitement of the creatures below.
“Why not? You’re a shark, aren’t you Jack? Swimming through life and taking what you want. Well, now turnabout’s fair play,” Gabriel chuckled malevolently. He held the man’s penis in the other hand and shoved it in Jack’s mouth. “Now, suck on that, bitch.”
Jack tried to spit out the bloody organ, but Gabriel wasn’t about to let that happen. He shoved the small cylinder-shaped thing all the way down John’s throat. The man was clearly horrified, but Gabriel wasn’t done yet. He cut the man’s arm and dripped a pint of blood into the reddened waters, just to drive the sharks into a feeding frenzy. Finally he dropped the screaming child rapist into the waters and ate a Snickers bar as he watched the killers of the sea rip the man into bite-sized pieces.
And that was just the start.
Gabriel next made sure to be the angel on the shoulders of Quentin Travers, Director of the Watcher’s Council. Mr. Travers sent an excellent watcher (one that Gabriel had chosen) named Diana Domer to take Faith into custody. The girl’s mother was jailed on a variety of charges and Diana provided Faith with the type of home and upbringing she deserved.
Gabriel was proud of his work and hoped he had done right by the memory of Sineya with his actions. Faith was finally safe and would receive the best type of training every slayer hoped for.
However, there was something tickling the back of his brain…although he left for other parts of the world he couldn’t stop thinking of the girl and wondering if he had done the right thing by leaving her. But it was already bad enough that Faith had a strong enough hold over him that Gabriel had intervened so much already in her life. If he went back and spent time with her, he could imagine the fiasco with Sineya happening all over again.
No matter how he tried to distract himself - elaborate tricks and affairs with various goddesses - Gabriel felt an emptiness inside that had been created when Sineya died, and which had now expanded due to his distance from Faith. He felt no better than a dumb ass love-sick teenager with the way he was mooning over this mere child.
Then again, she was more than a child. She was a slayer, a daughter of Sineya. Housed within her spirit was the essence of Sineya, dark and mysterious, loving and gentle, violent and protective. It called to him. He wanted to protect her, to care for her, to be whatever she needed - a friend, a lover; it didn’t matter.
Was he being foolish? Was his mind just playing tricks on him due to loneliness and loss? Was his connection to Faith’s spirit something that his subconscious created out of boredom?
Gabriel did not know. After all, he had no confidants to discuss this with.
It was times like these that he missed his Father and his siblings with a renewed fervor. Their unconditional love would hold his Grace without words or judgment at a moment like this. Love would flow through him, strengthening him.
Without the warmth of Heaven, he decided for the next best option - a cathedral.
This was not an activity he partook in often - perhaps only six times since he ran away from Heaven. But Gabriel was desperate.
He sat in on a service and even took the Eucharist, smiling inwardly at the way the priest’s eyes glowed with renewed religious zeal as he touched the angel’s forehead and blessed him - there was a part of those in tuned with God that always responded in a similar manner when they made contact with Gabriel.
The scripture passages the priest had spoken about had also been quite timely - a passage from 1 Corinthians:
“1 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Gabriel mulled on those holy words granted to a prophet centuries ago. Sometimes, he wondered if his silent Father still did exist and had not disappeared as Michael and Gabriel had thought. These words held great meaning to Gabriel at the moment, and it seemed like the kind of message his Dad would send.
Then again, Dad had peaced out on them a long time ago and Gabriel severely doubted he was still around.
Still, the message was important to consider. Faith, hope, and love. Faith did, in fact, give him hope - she made him wonder if he could relive those moments between him and Sineya. Already he loved her; that was an instinctual thing.
Yet “love is patient” and is not “self-seeking”. If he were to approach Faith, it would only to fulfill his own needs to redemption. Therefore, if he truly loved her, then he needed to stay away from this daughter of Sineya.
Regardless of how tempted he was to say ‘screw it’ and go check up on her.
Next... Chapter 4 “Pepsi Max to the Rescue”