Fic: Rewrite
There’s a brief moment when he’s thinking over Dean’s words, over everything and he makes his choice, Gabriel’s Grace flares up, bright and pure, majestic, beautiful and even more powerful than it once was. It seems second only to the Creator. It resounds through the oceans and seas, through Heaven and Hell. It’s a brief moment, probably less than a nano-second but it catches all the Angels, Fallen or not, off-guard. It rings and echoes deep into their souls. They see Gabriel’s choice; they see his Love, his Sacrifice. They see how it ends.
There is pain sure, Gabriel is his little brother after all, but Lucifer has killed brothers and sisters before, will kill more brothers and sisters. He can’t care any more; he’s gone too far to care. Michael can’t care either, he’s had so many brothers and sisters die before Gabriel, and there will be more after Gabriel. He is Heaven’s sword and Gabriel has already been branded a traitor of Heaven long ago. The other angels are confused about this pain, because they’ve long forgotten what Gabriel’s warmth felt like.
Something inside Raphael breaks.
***
Once upon a Time, in the beginning when every angel saw the face of their parent, God had created the world, and even when it was in its rawest form all his angels had found it beautiful. They all watched in awe and wonder as their Father moulded, and crafted, and poured His Love into his Creation. Then God turned to them, to all of them, and asked them to help him paint the world in beauty, and they obeyed laughing and giddy with wonder. He gave Raphael the wind and air, and gave Gabriel the waters, and they rushed forward, laughing harder than the rest, into the world and let their Grace spread and disperse until Raphael became the air, and Gabriel became the water, and they helped God breathe life into this world, while Michael and Lucifer watched over them.
Seven days in Heaven passed and they all were still giddy with joy.
Once upon a time, they were still family, the first humans were part of their family. God would talk to them all every day. Lucifer would sing songs for his Father and brethren, from where he’d perch in the heavens. Michael would coil around him, Grace shining around Lucifer’s own, wings wrapped around the Morning Star. Sometimes Michael’s voice would join with his younger brother. Below on Earth, they’d dance their own unique dance and create the music to Lucifer’s songs. Raphael the wind, whistling through the trees in Eden and whirling around the sea, worrying the water. Gabriel would gush around as the streams winding his way till he became the seas and roared, sway and throw up sharp waves against the wind. Sometimes they’d dance alone, sometimes they’d pull their siblings to join them, Gabriel drenching them, and Raphael drying them, and the humans would watch besides God laughing with warmth and happiness.
Back then Gabriel was clumsy, and would constantly trip over his own wings. Raphael being the Healer had more bruises than anyone else. Gabriel had taught the fledglings to fly. Held them if they fell, and wrapped the little ones in the warmth of his wings and grace. He’d groomed their wings to distract them from the pain when Raphael would heal them. Raphael had taught them to sing, dance, and to heal. Raphael had told them stories, taken them into Eden and taught them about the plants and animals, and to laugh at Gabriel when he tripped over his wings again. Gabriel had held them and taught them to pray. God’s love was eternal he’d told them. Gabriel taught the angels to love.
Back then Michael and Lucifer stood together proud and bright, an extension for their Father’s eyes and arms, watching over Creation, but they also stood aloof. Back then it should have been a sign for things to come. They loved their Father’s creation, but they loved their Father and each other more. But they were all young and they were all family and once upon a time that meant something.
Then came the Fall. Lucifer refused to love humans more, refused to place the ‘mud-monkeys’ on the same pedestal as he place their Father or Michael. Gabriel had pleaded with him to listen to Father. After all hadn’t Father made them in His image? It made sense that Father wanted them to love the humans more. But Lucifer refused to listen to them. And Michael cast him out on Father’s orders. Lucifer fell, but slowly he took a good chunk of their brethren with him.
It was understandable that Michael became colder. He’d hardly been created a little while, when Lucifer was. He’d raised Lucifer. And yet he had to be the one to lead the army in the War against him. He had to be the one to cast him out. And so Michael closed his heart and became the sword that bore God’s Wrath.
Gabriel and Raphael were never meant to be warriors. They were never meant to destroy. They were Messenger and Healer. They were air and water, the wind and oceans. When the War was over, they’d taken those forms and grieved in them, for Lucifer, for the Fallen, for broken family. They’d curled around each other, around the younger angels, lost and broken by the War, holding the young ones, comforting them. They’d lost themselves in deafening raging storms, screams, grief, and grace mixing, and not stopped till they were recalled back to Heaven by their Father.
Once upon a time even after everything, Gabriel still prayed for Lucifer, for the Fallen, for the Nephiliem he helped slaughter, for the humans, for their Father Himself, who’d locked himself in his Garden. He prayed with all his being. Weak and filled with sorrow, he’d wrapped his wings around the scared fledglings and prayed, and Raphael had held him as he did.
Because back then, even with Michael’s heart gone cold, and Lucifer screaming for vengeance, family still had meant something, and Raphael knew that Gabriel would rather wish himself into non-existence than see it fall apart.
When God disappeared Gabriel’s smile went thin and strained. He tried and tried, and Raphael has seen how much he tried, to keep them together, to hold them in place. But he couldn’t. Michael had long turned Heaven into more of an army who called one another brother and sister, but there was no much warmth left. They didn’t sing like they used too when different voice and sounds would come together harmoniously in new melodies, and each retain themselves. They didn’t dance like they used too, across the skies giddy and happy, and crashing into each other. Gabriel had seen how this would end, and loved them all too much to watch it with his own eyes. He finally left disillusioned.
When Gabriel leaves, broken and lost, five things happen. Gabriel doesn’t take Raphael with him. He forgets himself and becomes Loki, becomes a pagan god on the outside who’s a shadow of Michael and Lucifer both. There’s a smile on his face, and the taste of sugar and blood mix on his tongue. Raphael forgets the Healer he was, and becomes the soldier he was never supposed to be. The sword feels heavy in his hands, but he’s tired and just wants this to end. Heaven brands Gabriel a traitor, even though he hasn’t Fallen or betrayed it. To Raphael, God is dead.
***
When Lucifer plunges Gabriel’s own blade into the heart of his Grace, Gabriel doesn’t cry out. He’s seen how this ends, he knows how it ends. In fact he’s relieved he no longer has to watch it unfold. He’s seen too much pain, felt too many of his family die, to be able bear witness to any more of it. He closes his eyes and feels his Grace flare and leave his vessel, feels his wings burn into ether.
Raphael immediately leaves Heaven, and borrows an empty vessel a pagan god had used to go to his brother’s side, rage seeping out from him. He lets his Grace stretch far and wide into the air he once was, searching for Gabriel’s own scattering Grace and gathering it towards him. Did Lucifer really think he could kill Gabriel? Gabriel the archangel? Gabriel whose Grace was merged with the seas since he was given power over it? Gabriel who helped God bring life into this world? Gabriel who still loved all of them so much, that he’d choose to become the common enemy, just so that they could be one again? Gabriel, who even Azrael would mourn for?
Did Lucifer or Michael think that Raphael would let Gabriel die?
They may call Lucifer the brightest star, but in reality Gabriel was always the brightest one. He was the one with the most love in him, not Lucifer. Even now after he’d turned into a pagan god which both Heaven and Hell had sneered at, when his Grace had shone, it had shone bright with love.
He was the one who understood Father’s will the most, not Michael. There was a reason he was chosen as the Messenger, and it wasn’t because he was weak, it was because he understood. Right from the beginning he understood.
Michael may have raised Lucifer, but Gabriel and Raphael raised each other, and the other angels. Michael and Lucifer may think they’ve taught the angels everything they knew, but they didn’t. They only taught them to fight and obey. Raphael had been the one to heal them, and teach them to heal each other. Raphael had told them the stories that Michael never did. Gabriel had taught the angels to fly, to learn, to forgive, to pray, to love.
Raphael’s seen how this ends, he refuses to accept it.
He pulls the threads of light and ether together with shaky hands, pulls them from where they settle into the water, pulls them from where they’ve mixed with the Trickster’s energy, pulls them from his own Grace. He intertwines them until they form Gabriel’s body, moulds them until each feather of Gabriel’s six hundred beautiful wings are in place, works them into his vessel. He calls out Gabriel’s name desperately and he heals and fixes, and for the first time in a thousand years prays.
When he feels Gabriel’s consciousness come back he sends out a choked surge of gratitude to a Father he has long deemed dead. Gabriel blinks, far too used to his vessel, disoriented and surprised. “Raffy?”
Raphael laughs, long hard and happy. It’s akin to how he used to laugh in the beginning, when they barely had a care in the world. It echoes in the wind, and in the seas. The laughter fades into a smile, and Gabriel gives him a shaky one in return.
Michael and Lucifer may have been the oldest, but they always were far away stars, too wrapped up in each other to bother about the others. They’d always watched over and admired creation from afar. They’d loved this world from afar.
Raphael and Gabriel were the ones who’d helped breathe life into this world. They’d worked until parts of their Grace was permanently fused with it. This world is theirs, and Gabriel refuses to let his brothers destroy it. He has this look that says he’s going to drill that fact into Lucy’s and Mike’s thick celestial skulls. Raphael is inclined to agree with him and help him on all accounts.
Besides Gabriel will anyway need all the help he can get, because he probably still trips over his wings in battle.
They’re fighting because once upon a time, love, and family meant something; and even after everything that’s happened, it still means something. They know how this ends, and they’re going to rewrite it.
"Honestly Raffy, I dig the whole resurrection bit, but did you really have to use Baldur’s vessel as a host?