Fic: They were thy brothers (March-Stalkers Mighty timestamp)

[whit_merule]

They were thy brothers.
a March-Stalkers Mighty extra

She wished to give her brothers pleasure, and plucked the twelve flowers, and thought she would present each brother with one while at dinner. But at the self-same moment that she touched the flowers the twelve brothers were changed into twelve ravens, and flew away over the forest, and the

Comments

[auroramama]

I enjoyed this so much it shouldn't be legal. It's perfect everywhere.

Gabriel, raw with the shock of hearing about his brother’s death and with his imprisonment, struggles to retain his grip on reality and on sarcasm.Sam Winchester, destroyer of worlds and defense mechanisms

[whit_merule]

The little Marie story was actually the first thing I wrote. I rather like it all on its own, even independent of the rest of the story - it's more ambiguous and more stark, but of course, put it with the rest of the story and it hurts a lot more. :)

And, well, if Marie had asked Gabriel would have given her something, probably, but he wouldn't have given her everything. And he probably would actually have given her more than the little that she would have expected him to give (both because, well, angel: has resources to draw on that a human wouldn't have, so he's not living on the edge of survival constantly the way an itinerant human might in that lifestyle, and because Marie's life hasn't led her to expect generosity), so it makes perfect cold sense to give up one's own scruples to secure the whole of the cart (and the horse) and the goods and money in it. Keeping the children alive is worth becoming murderers for their sake

[auroramama]

Gabriel would have given her something, probably, but he wouldn't have given her everything.

Yes! This is where I got stuck in my comment. I wanted to say he'd have handed over everything, played Lady Bountiful, but I couldn't say it because I didn't really think he would. He would have given her more than she expected, not even including the gifts he wouldn't tell her about, like stealth healing. But he would have kept his livelihood and his cover. She wasn't wrong about that; it wouldn't have been a horse and a cart and his cargo, and maybe it wouldn't have saved her sister's children. Just... painful, yes. Is it better to deny your family than to murder an innocent friend? It has to be, doesn't it?

As for Sam... well, Gabriel's defence mechanisms are pretty low right now anyway, what with one thing and another, but Sam just won't stop poking.I suppose I should be angry with Sam on Gabriel's behalf, but I was worse than Sam at his age, so who am I to judge anyone else? I was brought up to believe that just about anything was best

[whit_merule]

Well, honestly, it's not like Sam can hurt him any more right now. And having someone right there poking at him has a bit of a grounding effect - plus, really, he was going to crash pretty damn badly as soon as all those walls came down and he actually had to realise Balthazar's death, so at least he had someone there for that to hold him up (literally et al.). Even if he's going to resent Sam over that for a while

[whit_merule]

Thank you. :) The whole self-imposed solitude thing was, of course, a way of dealing with certain issues in the first place, but it has since bred a whole host of little loneliness-related issues of its own, so, yes. He's a bit of a mess!

[ceedeeandco]

I really love

In the privacy of his head, he called it Righteousness - almost entirely sarcastically - because it was so distant, and so beleaguered, and so self-important, that it had no name for itself, as if it were the only real place in the world.

because it's so true. With the exception of Sam, and maybe Charlie, most of the humans don't even seem to be curious about the rest of the world. For Dean and probably a lot of others, the settlement and the land around it is the world. Gabriel knows more about humans elsewhere than all the local humans put together.

About Marie -- how isolated was the farmhouse? Would Gabriel already have known there were other people nearby?

[whit_merule]

Exactly. Gabriel knows far more about humans in some ways than any other character, becaus she knows the difference between what it means to BE human, and cultural assumptions that might differ from one community to another. Any of the humans here just assume that everything about their daily lives is a human thing, because they have nothing to define themselves against except for nothuman things, whereas Gabriel knows there are many other ways of, eg, making cheese or earning a living or defining a family unit. Or, of course, having sex