Fic: Rogue (Gabriel/M, Gabriel/F, PG-13) 22/36
For full notes and other chapters, please see the Masterpost.
Notes: This is the third part of the Missing an Angel series. It is recommended that you read the first two before reading this one.
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Chapter word count: 2,448
Chapter Summary: Kali is certainly being helpful, but Gabriel is still grieving.
CHAPTER 22:
Alone
Once Gabriel started eating again, she found she couldn’t stop. She inhaled everything Kali put in front of her from rice to curry to poli. The rich spices flavoring every dish made her grin in delight, but more importantly, the food soothed the Nephilim inside her. By the end of the first evening of eating, the pain in her belly had lessened to a dull ache, and after twenty-four hours of largely doing nothing but eating, even that ache was gone.
Gabriel finally sat back with a sigh of relief, smoothing one hand over the fabric of her dress pulled tightly over her extended stomach. Kali was sitting near her. She had been watching Gabriel eat with an amused little smile on her face, keeping up a steady supply of food for the starving angel. “Better?” the goddess asked.
Gabriel nodded sheepishly, glancing sideways at Kali. “Thank you,” she stressed, trying to pour her sincerest gratitude into those words. Maybe the Nephilim wouldn’t have managed to sap all of her strength. Maybe, on dry land, Gabriel could have survived the entire pregnancy. Maybe. But she didn’t have to worry any more. In just two days, Kali had assuaged her fears about carrying a Nephilim inside her. The child was content with the offering of food, and Gabriel’s grace was already well on its way to recovery.
“I thought you had children before.” Kali’s remark was off-handed, but her eyes were shrewd. She was trying to piece together the mystery of Loki. Gabriel had to tread carefully so as not to tip her hand to the goddess.
“Despite the rumors, I’m usually the father. I only ever bore Sleipnir, and he was…” Gabriel shook her head as if remembering. “It wasn’t like this.”
With Sleipnir, I ate like a horse! Loki’s voice whispered through Gabriel’s mind as the god stirred inside her.
With Sleipnir, you were a horse! Gabriel retorted without letting her external expression flicker.
Loki chuckled inside Gabriel’s mind as Kali accepted the words, mulling them over. Honestly, Gabriel had nothing to compare this pregnancy to. As far as she knew, no angel had ever born a Nephilim. They were always in male vessels, with a human female carrying the child. Lucifer had done more with the Nephilim than any of Heaven’s angels. Gabriel knew a thousand ways to kill one, but she didn’t know if their births killed their human mothers, or if the women had been able to endure.
The humans certainly wouldn’t have forgotten to eat, at least.
“We should get you some new clothes,” Kali declared, letting her eyes drop to Gabriel’s hand over her belly. “That dress is not meant for an expectant mother.”
“I can just…” Gabriel snapped her fingers, changing the dress so it fit her new body shape better, modeling it after the dresses she had seen other women wear. Recharged from the food, it was easy again to manipulate reality.
“You are such a man.” Kali rolled her eyes and shook her head, rising to her feet. She offered Gabriel her hands again to help her off the floor, which Gabriel appreciated. Apparently even angels had a hard time getting up and down while pregnant. “If you are going to stay here, you need to wear something more suitable for the climate.”
“I like the heat,” Gabriel protested, but she trailed after Kali again like a little duckling, eager to see what the goddess would provide.
Gabriel eventually ended up wrapped in a white silk sari embroidered in gold similar to the one Kali wore. The goddess had shown her several ways of draping the fabric around her belly, either covering it or showing it off. Gabriel had opted for covering it completely, not wanting to see what the Nephilim was doing to Sorcha’s familiar shape.
Over the next two months, Kali seldom left Gabriel’s side during the day, and Thorn always bounded along at her feet. They became a familiar sight in Bombay, where Kali frequently visited with the women of the city. At first, Gabriel was blatantly stared at while standing at Kali’s side, with the women whispering among themselves over the color of Gabriel’s hair and skin. When Gabriel, fed up with the gossiping as if she couldn’t hear, opened her mouth to retort, the whispers turned into shock. As Heaven’s Messenger, Gabriel spoke every human tongue flawlessly. While in Bombay, Gabriel spoke Marathi, the local native language. Apparently, no one as pale as Gabriel had ever mastered Marathi before, and she was a novelty in a new way.
With a shared language came understanding. Once the women realized they could talk to Gabriel, they flocked around her, asking questions about her home and pressing their hands against her belly. The growing Nephilim apparently reveled in the attention, lashing out with strong kicks that made Gabriel wince and the women laugh.
“Do they realize who you are?” Gabriel murmured to Kali on one of these outings, as some of the women danced and clapped while the rest watched. “Do they know who I am?”
“To some degree,” Kali answered. She was reclining on her side as she watched the dancers, with Gabriel resting against her stomach-it was too hard to sit on the ground now without some form of support. Kali’s hand was draped possessively over Gabriel’s belly, feeling the Nephilim’s stirring and kicks.
Kali did that frequently, Gabriel noted, found reasons to touch her. She spoke to the Nephilim too, addressed it as if it were another person in the room with them. Sometimes, in the evening, Kali sang to the unborn child. Gabriel didn’t understand why. She did everything she could to ignore the creature. It might be carrying a piece of Fergus’ soul, but right now, it was only a reminder of how much Gabriel had lost. Still, Kali was her hostess, and Gabriel wouldn’t begrudge the goddess anything she felt necessary to fulfill her new ‘maternal’ urges.
“They know I am a goddess, but they deny it at the same time. They call me Kali, but they do not believe me to be Kali. In many ways, they see me as just another of their number, a common woman, and yet they are always aware that I am eternally above them. Likely, they feel the same towards you.”
“I see,” Gabriel mused, eyeing the women thoughtfully. “Tell me about this dance?”
Kali’s fingers stroked idly over Gabriel’s stomach as she looked back toward the dancers. “Pallavi is looking for her lover,” she said, explaining quietly with small gestures to indicate which dancer she was referring to. “Urvi and Madhul are trying to help her look, but he is missing. They were in the garden, but he was not there. They went to the river, but he was not there. Now they are on the mountain, and he is not there. Pallavi is distraught. See, now she is lamenting to the gods, begging them to restore him to her. He is not the strongest, or the bravest, or the smartest, but he is hers, and she loves him dearly.”
He is hers.
I was his.
“Excuse me,” Gabriel murmured, attempting to get to her feet. She brushed off Kali’s attempts to help, instead using her own wings to prop herself up. “No, you can stay. I’ll be back at the house. I just… I’ll be at the house.”
I was his.
Kali gave Gabriel more time to grieve than she had expected, not returning until well after the sun had set. Gabriel was sitting under a plumeria tree in Kali’s garden, one arm wrapped around it, leaning against the sturdy trunk. Thorn was curled up in a little ball at her side, his nose tucked into his tail, paw occasionally twitching as he dreamt. Kali glided effortlessly through the soft grasses, her bare feet completely silent in the garden, but Gabriel sensed her approach anyway. She waited until the goddess was seated beside her before turning her head and nodding slightly to acknowledge Kali. Kali gave a small nod back and folded her hands in her lap.
For three hours, the two simply sat together, watching the stars appear and revolve through the heavens. Gabriel tipped her head back to watch one fall, the bright light streaking across the sky just like a falling angel.
“I miss him.” Gabriel closed her eyes as the confession slipped out unbidden, one hand curling around her belly.
Kali’s attention turned back to Gabriel, an almost palpable presence, but the goddess remained silent, waiting for Gabriel to continue. She could talk if she wanted to, or she could fall quiet again. Kali wouldn’t press either way.
“The father,” Gabriel clarified. “He wasn’t… it wasn’t… I wasn’t…” She wanted to talk, but the words were jumbling up inside her, catching on an all-too-familiar lump in her throat and refusing to emerge. “I just…”
“It wasn’t a difficult cycle,” Kali murmured, cutting through the muddle to find the truth. “No human made you love him.”
“He made me love him.” Fergus, with his dark eyes and his bright smile, swam up in Gabriel’s memory. The way Fergus would lean against her shoulder, laugh at her jokes, catch her hand and just run, run so hard and fast across the moors that it was almost as good as flying… there had been a thousand little things about Fergus that the angel had fallen in love with, on top of everything about him that had been Cariel.
“What happened to him?”
“He died.” Gabriel’s voice hitched at the last word, and she turned against the trunk of the tree, the rough bark hiding her face. “I had to leave him for a time, and when I returned, it was too late. Demons had…” Kali made a disgusted noise at the mention of demons, understanding what their involvement meant. “I couldn’t save him. All I could do was make his last night on Earth something amazing.”
“Does he know you carry his child?”
Gabriel shook her head. “I didn’t tell him. I wanted… I just wanted to save him, save a piece of him. But I didn’t think it through… this thing is going to be a monster, an abomination.”
“It will also be your child.” One of Kali’s hands stroked Gabriel’s hair, hanging unbound and curly down her back, while a second found its way to Gabriel’s belly, covering the angel’s hand. “Your child, yours and his. Do you not love Sleipnir? Is not Fenrir your son? Does Hel never cross your mind?”
Loki’s children were all considered abominations, Gabriel knew, but that was just it. They were Loki’s children, not hers. She could care for them because she had no part in creating them. She looked after them as best she could, for Loki’s sake, but she didn’t love them the way he did.
Could any angel love a Nephilim? The last time Nephilim walked the Earth, Lucifer rounded them up and raised them in Hell. He had been proud of his half-angelic army, but he hadn’t loved them. Had their angelic parents stepped in to raise them, or were they simply reared as little brothers, like the angels themselves had been?
Could Gabriel find it in herself to be called Father? Would that be presuming too much, claiming a title formerly reserved for God alone?
“There is more to this than you are telling me,” Kali stated, after Gabriel remained silent. It wasn’t a demand for more answers, just a simple acknowledgement that she couldn’t pass judgment without knowing more of the story. Kali curled two right arms around Gabriel’s side, tugging her gently away from the tree. Reluctantly, Gabriel transferred her cling from the unyielding trunk to Kali’s softer, warmer body.
“I am alone, Kali,” Gabriel murmured against the goddess’ shoulder. “I was… my brothers have driven me far from home.” Loki had brothers, and they didn’t always get along. This wasn’t too suspicious. “And not even for… if they knew what I had done with him, with Fergus, they never would have let me escape with my life.” She rested her hand on her belly, between her body and Kali’s.
Technically, angels were forbidden from lying with human women. Fergus had been a human man. Technically, a loophole existed, and Gabriel loved loopholes.
Realistically, it was a loophole Raphael would never allow her. Regardless of the genders, Gabriel had lain with a human with the intent to create a Nephilim. She had created a Nephilim. She carried the proof inside her. By allowing this child to be born, Gabriel had added yet another death sentence upon her head. What was she up to now? Neglecting her duties, turning her back on Heaven, fleeing Heaven (for those were two different charges in the angelic code of conduct), resisting capture, attacking an angel of the Host (even though Barachiel had complied willingly, erasing his memories while she was a fugitive would be seen as a hostile action), and now creating a Nephilim. She was dead six times over if her brothers ever caught her. Heaven’s gates were forever barred to her.
Heaven’s gates were barred to her. She could never go home.
She could never go home.
Gabriel’s breath caught in her throat, and she clutched at Kali, her fingers digging in to the goddess’ sari and wrinkling the silk. She was dizzy, the world spun around her, and her wings were shivering uncontrollably against her back. She had defied the will of Heaven six times, and now she was alone, alone with a monster inside her body and Cariel burning in Hell, never to be at her side again, never to stand back to back or shoulder to shoulder, and she was alone and-
“Loki!” Kali had Gabriel by the waist and shoulders now, shaking her gently. “Loki, snap out of it. You are not alone. You are here. With me. You are not alone. Whatever your brothers did, they are no match for me. I am Kali. Look at me, Loki. Listen to me. Trust me.”
“Kali, I…” Gabriel’s words were faint, without any breath behind them, as she fought to reign in the terror that was paralyzing her limbs. “I, you don’t-”
“You are not alone.” Kali’s words radiated with power, cutting through Gabriel’s panic to resonate against her core.
“Not…?” Gabriel asked weakly, lifting her eyes to Kali’s.
Kali leaned in, her hair brushing against Gabriel’s cheeks as her lips touched the angel’s. “Not alone,” she repeated against Gabriel’s mouth.
Gabriel lifted one trembling hand to curl it around Kali’s neck, pulling her in for another kiss. “Not alone?”
“Not alone.”
Next...
Notes: This is the third part of the Missing an Angel series. It is recommended that you read the first two before reading this one.
Chapter Rating: PG-13
Chapter word count: 2,448
Chapter Summary: Kali is certainly being helpful, but Gabriel is still grieving.
CHAPTER 22:
Alone
Once Gabriel started eating again, she found she couldn’t stop. She inhaled everything Kali put in front of her from rice to curry to poli. The rich spices flavoring every dish made her grin in delight, but more importantly, the food soothed the Nephilim inside her. By the end of the first evening of eating, the pain in her belly had lessened to a dull ache, and after twenty-four hours of largely doing nothing but eating, even that ache was gone.
Gabriel finally sat back with a sigh of relief, smoothing one hand over the fabric of her dress pulled tightly over her extended stomach. Kali was sitting near her. She had been watching Gabriel eat with an amused little smile on her face, keeping up a steady supply of food for the starving angel. “Better?” the goddess asked.
Gabriel nodded sheepishly, glancing sideways at Kali. “Thank you,” she stressed, trying to pour her sincerest gratitude into those words. Maybe the Nephilim wouldn’t have managed to sap all of her strength. Maybe, on dry land, Gabriel could have survived the entire pregnancy. Maybe. But she didn’t have to worry any more. In just two days, Kali had assuaged her fears about carrying a Nephilim inside her. The child was content with the offering of food, and Gabriel’s grace was already well on its way to recovery.
“I thought you had children before.” Kali’s remark was off-handed, but her eyes were shrewd. She was trying to piece together the mystery of Loki. Gabriel had to tread carefully so as not to tip her hand to the goddess.
“Despite the rumors, I’m usually the father. I only ever bore Sleipnir, and he was…” Gabriel shook her head as if remembering. “It wasn’t like this.”
With Sleipnir, I ate like a horse! Loki’s voice whispered through Gabriel’s mind as the god stirred inside her.
With Sleipnir, you were a horse! Gabriel retorted without letting her external expression flicker.
Loki chuckled inside Gabriel’s mind as Kali accepted the words, mulling them over. Honestly, Gabriel had nothing to compare this pregnancy to. As far as she knew, no angel had ever born a Nephilim. They were always in male vessels, with a human female carrying the child. Lucifer had done more with the Nephilim than any of Heaven’s angels. Gabriel knew a thousand ways to kill one, but she didn’t know if their births killed their human mothers, or if the women had been able to endure.
The humans certainly wouldn’t have forgotten to eat, at least.
“We should get you some new clothes,” Kali declared, letting her eyes drop to Gabriel’s hand over her belly. “That dress is not meant for an expectant mother.”
“I can just…” Gabriel snapped her fingers, changing the dress so it fit her new body shape better, modeling it after the dresses she had seen other women wear. Recharged from the food, it was easy again to manipulate reality.
“You are such a man.” Kali rolled her eyes and shook her head, rising to her feet. She offered Gabriel her hands again to help her off the floor, which Gabriel appreciated. Apparently even angels had a hard time getting up and down while pregnant. “If you are going to stay here, you need to wear something more suitable for the climate.”
“I like the heat,” Gabriel protested, but she trailed after Kali again like a little duckling, eager to see what the goddess would provide.
Gabriel eventually ended up wrapped in a white silk sari embroidered in gold similar to the one Kali wore. The goddess had shown her several ways of draping the fabric around her belly, either covering it or showing it off. Gabriel had opted for covering it completely, not wanting to see what the Nephilim was doing to Sorcha’s familiar shape.
Over the next two months, Kali seldom left Gabriel’s side during the day, and Thorn always bounded along at her feet. They became a familiar sight in Bombay, where Kali frequently visited with the women of the city. At first, Gabriel was blatantly stared at while standing at Kali’s side, with the women whispering among themselves over the color of Gabriel’s hair and skin. When Gabriel, fed up with the gossiping as if she couldn’t hear, opened her mouth to retort, the whispers turned into shock. As Heaven’s Messenger, Gabriel spoke every human tongue flawlessly. While in Bombay, Gabriel spoke Marathi, the local native language. Apparently, no one as pale as Gabriel had ever mastered Marathi before, and she was a novelty in a new way.
With a shared language came understanding. Once the women realized they could talk to Gabriel, they flocked around her, asking questions about her home and pressing their hands against her belly. The growing Nephilim apparently reveled in the attention, lashing out with strong kicks that made Gabriel wince and the women laugh.
“Do they realize who you are?” Gabriel murmured to Kali on one of these outings, as some of the women danced and clapped while the rest watched. “Do they know who I am?”
“To some degree,” Kali answered. She was reclining on her side as she watched the dancers, with Gabriel resting against her stomach-it was too hard to sit on the ground now without some form of support. Kali’s hand was draped possessively over Gabriel’s belly, feeling the Nephilim’s stirring and kicks.
Kali did that frequently, Gabriel noted, found reasons to touch her. She spoke to the Nephilim too, addressed it as if it were another person in the room with them. Sometimes, in the evening, Kali sang to the unborn child. Gabriel didn’t understand why. She did everything she could to ignore the creature. It might be carrying a piece of Fergus’ soul, but right now, it was only a reminder of how much Gabriel had lost. Still, Kali was her hostess, and Gabriel wouldn’t begrudge the goddess anything she felt necessary to fulfill her new ‘maternal’ urges.
“They know I am a goddess, but they deny it at the same time. They call me Kali, but they do not believe me to be Kali. In many ways, they see me as just another of their number, a common woman, and yet they are always aware that I am eternally above them. Likely, they feel the same towards you.”
“I see,” Gabriel mused, eyeing the women thoughtfully. “Tell me about this dance?”
Kali’s fingers stroked idly over Gabriel’s stomach as she looked back toward the dancers. “Pallavi is looking for her lover,” she said, explaining quietly with small gestures to indicate which dancer she was referring to. “Urvi and Madhul are trying to help her look, but he is missing. They were in the garden, but he was not there. They went to the river, but he was not there. Now they are on the mountain, and he is not there. Pallavi is distraught. See, now she is lamenting to the gods, begging them to restore him to her. He is not the strongest, or the bravest, or the smartest, but he is hers, and she loves him dearly.”
He is hers.
I was his.
“Excuse me,” Gabriel murmured, attempting to get to her feet. She brushed off Kali’s attempts to help, instead using her own wings to prop herself up. “No, you can stay. I’ll be back at the house. I just… I’ll be at the house.”
I was his.
Kali gave Gabriel more time to grieve than she had expected, not returning until well after the sun had set. Gabriel was sitting under a plumeria tree in Kali’s garden, one arm wrapped around it, leaning against the sturdy trunk. Thorn was curled up in a little ball at her side, his nose tucked into his tail, paw occasionally twitching as he dreamt. Kali glided effortlessly through the soft grasses, her bare feet completely silent in the garden, but Gabriel sensed her approach anyway. She waited until the goddess was seated beside her before turning her head and nodding slightly to acknowledge Kali. Kali gave a small nod back and folded her hands in her lap.
For three hours, the two simply sat together, watching the stars appear and revolve through the heavens. Gabriel tipped her head back to watch one fall, the bright light streaking across the sky just like a falling angel.
“I miss him.” Gabriel closed her eyes as the confession slipped out unbidden, one hand curling around her belly.
Kali’s attention turned back to Gabriel, an almost palpable presence, but the goddess remained silent, waiting for Gabriel to continue. She could talk if she wanted to, or she could fall quiet again. Kali wouldn’t press either way.
“The father,” Gabriel clarified. “He wasn’t… it wasn’t… I wasn’t…” She wanted to talk, but the words were jumbling up inside her, catching on an all-too-familiar lump in her throat and refusing to emerge. “I just…”
“It wasn’t a difficult cycle,” Kali murmured, cutting through the muddle to find the truth. “No human made you love him.”
“He made me love him.” Fergus, with his dark eyes and his bright smile, swam up in Gabriel’s memory. The way Fergus would lean against her shoulder, laugh at her jokes, catch her hand and just run, run so hard and fast across the moors that it was almost as good as flying… there had been a thousand little things about Fergus that the angel had fallen in love with, on top of everything about him that had been Cariel.
“What happened to him?”
“He died.” Gabriel’s voice hitched at the last word, and she turned against the trunk of the tree, the rough bark hiding her face. “I had to leave him for a time, and when I returned, it was too late. Demons had…” Kali made a disgusted noise at the mention of demons, understanding what their involvement meant. “I couldn’t save him. All I could do was make his last night on Earth something amazing.”
“Does he know you carry his child?”
Gabriel shook her head. “I didn’t tell him. I wanted… I just wanted to save him, save a piece of him. But I didn’t think it through… this thing is going to be a monster, an abomination.”
“It will also be your child.” One of Kali’s hands stroked Gabriel’s hair, hanging unbound and curly down her back, while a second found its way to Gabriel’s belly, covering the angel’s hand. “Your child, yours and his. Do you not love Sleipnir? Is not Fenrir your son? Does Hel never cross your mind?”
Loki’s children were all considered abominations, Gabriel knew, but that was just it. They were Loki’s children, not hers. She could care for them because she had no part in creating them. She looked after them as best she could, for Loki’s sake, but she didn’t love them the way he did.
Could any angel love a Nephilim? The last time Nephilim walked the Earth, Lucifer rounded them up and raised them in Hell. He had been proud of his half-angelic army, but he hadn’t loved them. Had their angelic parents stepped in to raise them, or were they simply reared as little brothers, like the angels themselves had been?
Could Gabriel find it in herself to be called Father? Would that be presuming too much, claiming a title formerly reserved for God alone?
“There is more to this than you are telling me,” Kali stated, after Gabriel remained silent. It wasn’t a demand for more answers, just a simple acknowledgement that she couldn’t pass judgment without knowing more of the story. Kali curled two right arms around Gabriel’s side, tugging her gently away from the tree. Reluctantly, Gabriel transferred her cling from the unyielding trunk to Kali’s softer, warmer body.
“I am alone, Kali,” Gabriel murmured against the goddess’ shoulder. “I was… my brothers have driven me far from home.” Loki had brothers, and they didn’t always get along. This wasn’t too suspicious. “And not even for… if they knew what I had done with him, with Fergus, they never would have let me escape with my life.” She rested her hand on her belly, between her body and Kali’s.
Technically, angels were forbidden from lying with human women. Fergus had been a human man. Technically, a loophole existed, and Gabriel loved loopholes.
Realistically, it was a loophole Raphael would never allow her. Regardless of the genders, Gabriel had lain with a human with the intent to create a Nephilim. She had created a Nephilim. She carried the proof inside her. By allowing this child to be born, Gabriel had added yet another death sentence upon her head. What was she up to now? Neglecting her duties, turning her back on Heaven, fleeing Heaven (for those were two different charges in the angelic code of conduct), resisting capture, attacking an angel of the Host (even though Barachiel had complied willingly, erasing his memories while she was a fugitive would be seen as a hostile action), and now creating a Nephilim. She was dead six times over if her brothers ever caught her. Heaven’s gates were forever barred to her.
Heaven’s gates were barred to her. She could never go home.
She could never go home.
Gabriel’s breath caught in her throat, and she clutched at Kali, her fingers digging in to the goddess’ sari and wrinkling the silk. She was dizzy, the world spun around her, and her wings were shivering uncontrollably against her back. She had defied the will of Heaven six times, and now she was alone, alone with a monster inside her body and Cariel burning in Hell, never to be at her side again, never to stand back to back or shoulder to shoulder, and she was alone and-
“Loki!” Kali had Gabriel by the waist and shoulders now, shaking her gently. “Loki, snap out of it. You are not alone. You are here. With me. You are not alone. Whatever your brothers did, they are no match for me. I am Kali. Look at me, Loki. Listen to me. Trust me.”
“Kali, I…” Gabriel’s words were faint, without any breath behind them, as she fought to reign in the terror that was paralyzing her limbs. “I, you don’t-”
“You are not alone.” Kali’s words radiated with power, cutting through Gabriel’s panic to resonate against her core.
“Not…?” Gabriel asked weakly, lifting her eyes to Kali’s.
Kali leaned in, her hair brushing against Gabriel’s cheeks as her lips touched the angel’s. “Not alone,” she repeated against Gabriel’s mouth.
Gabriel lifted one trembling hand to curl it around Kali’s neck, pulling her in for another kiss. “Not alone?”
“Not alone.”
Next...