Fic: Off-Screen (SPN/Okami)
Title: Off-Screen
Fandom: Supernatural, Okami
Genre: gen (some Amaterasu/Gabriel)
Rating/Warnings: PG
Characters: Gabriel, Amaterasu
Words: 2077
Summary: Gabriel fell at the hands of Lucifer, but he did not die. Not quite.
Author’s notes: This was a gift for my good friend clearlyapigeon, who requested Amaterasu from Okami and Gabriel/Loki from Supernatural. The first in what is shaping up to be a 'verse.
Okami is a video game released in North America in 2006. "Set sometime in classical Japanese history, Ōkami combines several Japanese myths, legends and folklore to tell the story of how the land was saved from darkness by the Shinto sun goddess, named Amaterasu, who took the form of a white wolf. It features a distinct sumi-e-inspired cel-shaded visual style and the Celestial Brush, a gesture-system to perform miracles." - wikipedia
Outside, the sun finished setting. Amaterasu felt it happen. She moved to the bed even as his eyes started to flutter. Lit the first candle of the night - blue, for rest. The words of the chant were effortless after so long (two years, every night. But it was almost over), and he sighed as the spell brought him under again.
(She did not approve of the depths to which many Western gods had fallen in the absence of followers, but they were still kin. The death of so many had reverberated through the Earth and sent icy tendrils prickling up her spine. And she'd wondered (laughter and mirrors; he had always been her favourite of the Northern Gods) who it was that had died. So she'd left. Her brother could be trusted with the country for a while. And she'd found him, discarded and framed by wings and with a single hole in his chest, in a land where rumours of an apocalypse ran wild. He was the only one whose body was still intact. She knew how to put two and two together.)
Amaterasu finished the blue, moved on. White for cleansing. Green for life. Arranged in a circle with five points, carefully, inside a mosaic of protective sigils and wards. And in the center of it all was Loki, who slept with a silence that was so utterly, utterly wrong. Amaterasu didn't think anybody knew she was here. But she wouldn't take chances. Not with this.
~ * ~
Later, when he's awake and talking and has stolen her favourite bead chain, she remembers exactly why she kicked him out of Japan in the first place. And she tells him so. Repeatedly.
(Because, really, all of this is his fault. If he hadn’t gone and died with so many other gods, she would never have felt the death all the way in Japan. And if he hadn’t been so likeable she would never have felt the need to go and see if there was anything salvageable of him, and wouldn't have spent the next two years tied to North America, and wouldn't have been here for Izanagi's awakening.)
“So let me get this straight. You heard -”
“Sensed.”
“You sensed that I was dead. So you dropped everything you were doing in Japan and rushed to my side to resurrect me with a ritual that I've never heard of before.” Of course he hasn't. He's been hanging out with these American gods. Don't know anything. “That takes two years.” Loki grins and leans forward in his chair. “Admit it. You like me.”
That is so not the point. “Two years, Loki. You owe me.” He seems to consider this. Then he makes her tea, which is kind of cheating because Amaterasu will forgive a lot of things in exchange for Loki's tea. It really is that good.
Then she tells him who else is in North America now. Loki takes her teacup back and summons a bottle of some American liqueur to pour into both of them. “I have a feeling I'll need to be drunk for this.”
~ * ~
A servant had been standing in the doorway for half an hour; it knew better than to interrupt. She waved it in as she sank back into the chair beside the bed (Gods couldn't get sore throats, but she felt like it sometimes, then.)
'Mistress,' the soul breathed, china bells and silk. 'The monsters are moving.'
Amaterasu closed her eyes for the flush of pictures. They'd been active, lately. Spreading. And Amaterasu knew she was not the only one who'd been keeping an eye on them (But now, it seemed, she was at ground zero.) They were receiving messages. Rallying. There was only one reason for that. Only one creature that could call them all.
Izanagi.
But she can't do anything. Izanagi cannot be fought by the younger gods. They do not have it in them, anymore than her children would. The Divine are powerful, yes, but the natural order is absolute. There are timelines and heirarchies, duties and compulsions. Instructions for who can do what and where. It keeps reality balanced. She could no more ignore it than she could will herself not to exist.
(Humans, though. Humans are weak, willful and blind. They are unaware of the nature of the universe and thus are unconstrained by it. They can do anything. Change anything. They need only figure out how. They are, perhaps, the most dangerous creatures in existence. Tsukiyomi always teased her for being so fond of them. For abandoning her pride to consort with them.)
~ * ~
“You got yourself killed. For two humans.” Amaterasu's grin is in serious danger of splitting past her face. She's sitting cross legged on the sofa with her tea held in both hands on her lap, and Loki totally can't tease her about the last two years now. “You -” And, oh, now she's getting all teary-eyed. This always happens when she's drunk. “I'm so proud of you, Loki. I knew you had it in you.”
“Well. They were special humans.” Loki himself looks far too sober for the amount of alcohol he's ingested, but that's fairly par for the course. “Like, they had prophecies and everything. And they had a point.”
“Proud of you.” She reaches forward and pats his leg a bit clumsily, then has to grab the coffee table with the other to keep from overbalancing. Her teacup lands on the floor, in a growing puddle. She and Loki stare at it for a minute. She has to put a fist to her mouth to stifle a sob from escaping (she is not crying. Not! It's just that that was amazing tea, and now it's wasted on the floor, and it'll get soaked up and forgotten. It's sad. It is.) She glances up at Loki, who is doing a very good impression of a deer in headlights.
“I'll, uh, get you some more.” He gets up to go to the kitchen, which is entirely unnecessary for a god who can materialize things, and manages to avoid walking into the doorpost. Barely. Amaterasu takes the gesture for what it is, and has managed to compose herself by the time he gets back (this is harder than it sounds when one is an emotional drunk).
She sniffs a little and accepts the new cup of tea, putting it on the table. “Sorry. Izanagi always makes me depressed. Always 'Maim! Kill! My children!'” She waves her hands in what she personally thinks is a good approximation of whatever she's trying to say with them.
“You would know.” And, right, he wasn't really around when Izanagi was. He shrugs a little, like any poor fool who thinks his own family is so much scarier than anyone else's. “Seriously. I don't think we have to worry about Eve. These guys, the Winchesters. They're crazy, you know?”
~ * ~
Eventually, Loki woke. Blinked up at the ceiling and said “oblivion's a lot more colourful than I thought it'd be.”
And Amaterasu had lived a long time, even for a god. She had pieced together what had happened from the rumours of Lucifer and the wings that surrounded his body (Loki, Loki. She had known something was different about him), and so when he pushed himself up on his elbows and looked at his chest she said “An angel sword is meant to kill angels. You are also a god.”
He was quiet at that. Then “so. Couldn't stay away, huh?"
~ * ~
Amaterasu has actually met the Winchesters before. Resurrecting a guy gets boring after the first few months. She isn't exactly known for her attention span, after all. So some days, after the ritual ended at dawn, she went out. Scouted the town (suburbia, nice houses, boring people, an accident made front-line news), went to a few bars. Flirted with a few guys. Especially this one gorgeous guy who, according to the locals, was newer than she was. Shacked up with a woman he'd slept with years ago. And, oh yeah, who reeked of trauma and literally had a cloud of black karma following him around everywhere.
She's totally not a stalker, though. She'd merely been looking out for the safety of her charge. Honest.
She wonders sometimes if maybe she should have told him that the guy who came to pick him up a year later wasn't precisely his brother. Technically. She's sure he'll figure it out. He seemed smart.
Loki's not finished, of course. He's never finished talking. He was cursed into silence once about 600 years back, and Amaterasu honestly thought the world had ended and she had missed it.
“Look what they did with the apocalypse.” He's using his teacup as a pointer, although he doesn't seem entirely sure of where to point it. “They seriously stuck Michael and Lucifer in a cage together. Both of them.” Loki actually sounds a bit awed. “I mean, the last time those two were in the same room together for more than an hour was....” He has to think about this. “I dunno, before you were born.”
Amaterasu hopes he's right. Otherwise there'll be war, and those always take so long. And if it happens it'll be decades before she can have any fun again, and her temper always gets worse when that happens, and Tsuki-Yomi will start ignoring her until things settle down again. It's just an all around unpleasant prospect.
~ * ~
When Loki was strong enough to walk around the house, Amaterasu paid a visit to one Bobby Singer. She went by the backdoor, in wolf form (the first time in two years, and she relished the freedom), but she must have tripped an alarm. She heard his footsteps almost as soon as she got inside, another benefit of a form with superior senses. He appeared in the window, frowning, looking out at the yard. He'd always been paranoid, she remembered. Wondered if he would even read the documents if he didn't know who they were from. So she stayed still for a moment. Looked back at him, in plain sight in the yard. She wondered if he would recognize her. It had been years since she'd last seen him, in Japan.
That night there were dog biscuits left by the front door. She knew the was a reason she’d liked him.
~ * ~
Neither of them stick around to watch the final battle. Amaterasu offers to let Loki lay low at her place. At least till everything blows over. One way or another. “My brother. Susano'o. You remember him? He's always going on about how the world's going to end any day now. Been doing that for the last few millenia. Anyway, he's got a list of things to do in any given scenario. You give him some of your tea, I bet we could talk him into letting us in on his Izanagi plan.”
Loki, to his credit, doesn't say one word about her liking him. He just gets out the sake, and they spend their last night in North America quite drunk. It's a rather common state for anyone who hangs out with Loki, not that Amaterasu is complaining. It's the end times and all that, after all. If that's not an excuse to party, nothing is.
And so they've been planning his return a bit, because he didn't exactly leave the best of impressions the last time he was in Japan and Amaterasu rather likes her house unbroken. And Loki, of course, thinks they should have a reunion party. Sort of a welcome back. “We could throw it for you, at least. You've been gone. Have to have a party. It's a rule.”
Amaterasu would respond, but she's having trouble talking in between laughing. She's not sure Loki's really listening to her, anyway. He's still talking, and he's got that thinking look on his face that usually makes people who know him run away.
“Y'know, we should do that. Call everyone together. It'd be like a convention of badasses.”
She catches her breath long enough to give him a rather unladylike snort. “That rules you out.”
“Seriously? You did not seriously just use that line. That's just...I don't even know you anymore.”
Amaterasu is grinning. She thinks that maybe the future isn't so grim after all. Maybe there's still some reason to hope.