The Stars Align: Part Two: Earth (Gabriel/Castiel/Crowley)
**
Earth
**
Gabriel takes them to a swank hotel room at the Mandalay Bay on the Vegas strip. Not that he thinks for a second that Castiel will take the time to appreciate it, which is why he doesn't even go for the biggest room in the place. There won't be any forty person parties going on here. But the room does feature a view, a huge bed to accommodate wingspans, and a huge living space to accommodate Gabriel's slight eccentricities. Castiel won't take the time but Gabriel's been down this road before.
The one that leads to death, violence and mayhem mayhem mayhem. It's Heaven's default setting, the constant circle and Gabriel has been through this. The divide. The fall. And now he gets to be resurrected just to deal with it all over again? He couldn't stop it last time; he doesn't know what could be so different this time.
Maybe it's just Castiel that's different. Spicy little hot-head.
Gabriel studies his brother, standing confused in the middle of the suite's living space. He looks like he might feel more comfortable in a motel room with hourly rates and Gabriel remembers when Castiel was new. When he stood on a beach with God and God took a fistful of sand and blew it into the ocean so a new garrison of angels grew. And Gabriel had known each of their grace and he'd watched them walk out of the surf and God had said “And these shall be yours, Gabriel. And it shall be good.”
But Gabriel had been new as well and he hadn't been so sure.
They had, all of them, walked up to him with trust born into their beings. Gabriel had loved them the way he was meant to.
Castiel doesn't look at him with ingrained trust or love now. That's a bubble long since burst and it makes Gabriel grin while he steps forward and drapes his arm across Castiel's shoulders.
“What are we doing here?” comes Castiel's inevitable protest but Gabriel is busy leading him - forcefully - through the room and into the bedroom, pushing Castiel down onto the soft mattress and the warm duvet. “We have work to be doing. Raphael-”
“Will be around tomorrow. And the day after that and the day after that. Just like the war which'll be around forever. You can't stop it, Cas.”
Castiel stares up at him but Gabriel's hand grasping his shoulder keeps him down and Castiel doesn't try to fight against it. “I am not giving up,” Castiel bites out in all the righteous indignation an angel can summon. Gabriel rolls his eyes because it sounds a lot like a sullen tantrum.
“You can't stop it, Cas,” he tries again, “if you've got yourself so strung out you actually go through with stupid ideas like stealing angels from purgatory. Raphael and the war can wait. They aren't going to destroy themselves or the world in a few days. Shit like that takes awhile.”
“It wasn't a stupid idea,” Castiel mutters, which just strengthens the image of the sullen child whose toys have been messed with, dropping his gaze down to the white duvet beneath him.
“Just...do me a favor. I'm older and wiser so listen to me on this one thing.” Castiel gives a doubtful nod, a clear sign of how tired he must feel and Gabriel starts by pushing the suit jacket from Castiel's shoulders. The trench coat is gone, somewhere on the beach along with Gabriel's sword. Neither of them great loses, Gabriel doesn't want to wrap his fingers around that hilt again anyway. He didn't want to do it back then, either, and as he divests Castiel of his tie and button down shirt, he still feels the resistance of it against his brothers' chests.
Castiel must be reading the flickers of upset through his grace because he asks, while Gabriel drops to one knee at his feet to unlace Castiel's shoes, “Are they all returned to purgatory?”
“Yep. Right back where they started.” It was the right thing to do. It doesn't mean Gabriel has to enjoy having done it but that's the role of archangel, the role of big brother. Do the dirty work no one else wants to. Until you just can't take it anymore.
Fall with Lucifer or kill him. How was he supposed to make that choice, when he had been new and the world had been newer? Destiny forced him to make it anyway.
Gabriel startles at Castiel's hand resting at the top of his head and realizes he's paused in his motions so he returns to pulling Castiel's shoes from his feet. “And you? Do you have to go back?”
“Not yet.” Maybe eventually but Gabriel doesn't know that part yet. He grins up at Castiel. “Don't worry your pretty blue wings about it, little bro. I'll hold your hand for awhile yet.”
He strips Castiel down to his boxers with minimal complaint and Castiel even lends a hand at the end, gets with the program although he looks baffled enough to not have any clue why Gabriel is doing this. Just getting his clothes off or helping at all. Gabriel hopes Castiel only questions the first one because he's still on the fence about the second when “God commanded it” just doesn't seem to cut it for any of them anymore. Because it's the only option left might be a better fit but that’s not entirely true either.
With clothes strewn out on the floor, Gabriel manhandles Castiel into the bed, Castiel looking more bemused by the second. “This is a waste of time. We don't sleep,” Castiel protests even while Gabriel is fussing with the covers to draw them up to Castiel's chin and there's that sulky child again. Gabriel ruffles his hair.
“There's nothing in the rules to say that we can't.”
“I don't like to sleep.”
“Fuck, you're stubborn.” Gabriel stands back, can see by the tense lines of Castiel's bare shoulders where they're still exposed that the second he turns his back, Castiel is going to be on his feet again. So Gabriel strips off, feels each layer of clothing fall away, feels Castiel's eyes on him but it's not their vessels they need to worry about exposing.
Gabriel climbs into the bed next to Castiel and remembers when they were new.
**
The new garrison stands before Gabriel in perfect formation. All of them shimmering bright, all of them silver and white except for the edges of them. Here they are red or gold or blue or black. The manifestation of their aura, the crackling electric energy that will allow them to travel through space and time in an eye blink. A dozen of the new angels are all gold but varying and none as brilliantly colored as Gabriel.
Gabriel who they all look to with adoration and obedience but not so much as they do to God.
Gabriel walks among them for the first time and aside from color, there's not much difference between them. Except this one, deep midnight blue, this one is the same as the others but for the sign stamped out on his grace. A marker that Gabriel has only seen upon himself, and the rest of the original four. This one has a destiny ahead of him.
“You are mine,” he tells them all, not with a voice or with words, but it's understood all the same.
It's a long time before any of them learn voice and words and individuality.
In the beginning, Gabriel can wind among any of them. They're always near. Some thousand angels all told and Gabriel knows them deeply. He can twine their graces together, flawless and beautiful, until they know a sort of pleasure, a laughter that has no sound. He can meld deep blue into his golden strands until they explode into a cascade of energy.
They're all so perfect and so beautiful and Gabriel can't keep his grace off any of them.
None of it lasts. Their grace doesn't stay unblemished. Time moves somehow, in some passage that none of them pay attention to. An eye blink or a millennium, only the Lord knows.
There's something new on the horizon and within them.
Their grace changes. It holds shape. Suddenly each of Gabriel's angels is different to the next. This one is tall, this one shapelier, this one has long teeth and this one might be considered handsome. Their grace is still perfect, they are all still beautiful. But their colorful auras change, no longer surrounding them but cascading in strands of energy from their backs.
God snaps his fingers and a universe is born. From it raises creatures and Gabriel watches them grow and evolve and sees that the creatures mimic the new shape of their grace. Or do they mimic the creatures?
“Watch them very carefully. They will be your responsibility,” God tells the original four of them.
And it will be good.
The first cracks begin to show through the grace of Lucifer and his garrison in turn.
**
There are scars all through every angel's grace now. Gabriel has been long since used to seeing it and has his own fair share of them. The fire of purgatory would have wiped them clean, healed them, and made him fit to be new again. A thought that entices and scares him. He's not sure he wants to go through all this from the beginning.
He takes a closer look at Castiel's, remembers what it used to be with the perfect clarity of angels. Shimmering white and midnight blue. He's so busy following the spider webs of old pain - here the slow spread of poisonous torture, the shattering experience of death, the heavy splintering of too much - that he doesn't realize he's snaking his own grace out along the pathways of Castiel's story. Not until Castiel twitches by his side and Gabriel actually turns his head to take in Castiel's vessel and the wide-eyes.
“Sorry... Not a fan of getting a little handsy anymore, huh?” No, of course not, none of the angels are anymore. Not that Gabriel knows, not that Gabriel has been near another angel in decades. Then all of a sudden he's standing up to them, taking orders that might be from God or might be from his own head, and feeling up an old soldier. Gabriel should have stayed out of the bed and as it is, he turns onto his side away from Castiel, throwing his own sulky little tantrum that angels are prone to, and keeping his grace firmly to himself.
Castiel doesn't seem so intent to remain hands off though and soon enough, his palm finds Gabriel's back, cupping to a shoulder blade, and Gabriel can feel the heat of the vessel and the chilling brush of grace as Castiel shifts closer. “I do remember, you know.”
“Do you?” Gabriel doesn't mean for his voice to sound so hoarse. He left this behind eons ago and he likes it better that way.
“Things were different when you left. Of course there was war and the aftermath of it. But...no one ever took as much pleasure as you taught us to in the simple joy of a touch or a bond. Even when we were new, you were different from the others.”
“Good different or weird different?” Gabriel asks with a snort, determined Castiel shouldn't be the only stubborn obtuse one but now Castiel has taken up where Gabriel left off as well, by stroking thin tendrils of grace along the scars in Gabriel's. Here is betrayal and abandonment; here is loneliness of ages, and death. Gabriel's grace knows death as well. It almost hurts when Castiel's touches him but Gabriel wriggles back, until Castiel takes the hint and wraps their vessels close.
“You hurt me last time,” Castiel says and Gabriel can stretch his grace out and find that Castiel's knows betrayal as well.
“I know.” Gabriel wants to say that Castiel is hurting him right now, pushing their grace to slot alongside each other but he keeps his mouth shut. Pushes back because it's a stupid horrible temptation that Gabriel can only resist when it isn't directly in front of him. All around him.
Screw it. Castiel's vessel is molded to his back, right down to their feet, but it hardly matters. He thinks he groans at the release as he reaches out, grace over grace. And under and in and around. Everywhere, exploding from human containers and into each other.
**
Lucifer teaches Gabriel to raise his new fingers and snap them. He teaches Gabriel many things. Tricks and subterfuge and it was Lucifer that had taught him in the beginning, how two graces felt much better as one. Things that Gabriel has shown others, always returning to his big brother to sooth away his jealousy. Lucifer was the first one out of them to feel such things.
Abominations, Michael had said. To feel ill of each other and their fathers creations. Not that Michael felt good towards either of these things and he'd often look down upon Gabriel for the joy he expressed so openly, just as much as he looked down on Lucifer's jealousy.
“You'd be nothing without me,” Lucifer says and he throws his arm out to encompass some of Gabriel's garrison. “They would have nothing without you.”
Gabriel looks out over the landscape. They're on the ice fields and for all the color hidden in the depths, Gabriel only really cares about the three angels currently in their view. Uriel's fingers drag through the blue energy of Castiel's wings which swirls and sparks and drifts into nothing. Anael lays draped across their legs, scratching patterns into the ice. They lounge in their human shapes in a way that angels of Michael or Raphael's garrisons find unfathomable. Only Gabriel's and Lucifer's angels will act this way.
And now, what Lucifer asks of him. “It's too much. This is our home, Lucifer.”
“We were always different. We never belonged here. Side with me.” Lucifer's wings, the golden energy of them, wrap around Gabriel, sink into him.
The temptation is there. Lucifer is good at temptation and sometimes his arguments make sense. The planet they're set to watch over, the creatures that inhabit it. They breed disease, war, evil. None of this had existed until mankind was brought to light. Because God had said “Let there be light.” And there was and it was...not good.
“This is home.”
“Bring them with you. They'll follow you,” Lucifer argues because he knows home for Gabriel isn't Heaven. Home is those three angels and a thousand others.
“They're better off here,” Gabriel says but he's not so sure why he's arguing. He just knows that he has to.
“This is your only chance.”
“No.”
Gabriel's not sure he ever actually expected Lucifer to do it.
**
Their bodies haven't moved but their hearts pound, their breath is quick. Their grace thrums between them and they don't need words. Even after the rise and crest of energy. They settle and Gabriel allows himself to hope for the first time since the Fall. To remember for a moment what joy feels like along with trust and family. He sleeps though he shouldn't and when he rises, Castiel is gone from the bed.
He finds the other angel standing by the large picture window overlooking the Vegas strip, his palms spread out flat to the thick glass, frustration obvious in his eyes. “Thinking of doing a runner?” Gabriel asks behind him and Castiel flinches before turning. Gabriel has his arms crossed tight across his chest.
“I would have come back.” Gabriel doesn't answer. “I need to check the lines. We're at war.” As if Gabriel has forgotten or as if it's ever been any different.
“Fill me in then.”
“Gabriel...”
But Gabriel waves his hand, snaps his fingers so he's dressed and in his other appears a bottle of whiskey. The best. He screws the cap off, takes a swig and hands it out to Castiel. “Go on.”
Castiel takes the drink and after a drawn out pause, explains about Raphael and the apocalypse which is still breathing down their necks. Put on hold but not stopped.
“So what's on the rails then, boss?” It's not easy to say, to throw himself in with this when every fiber of grace in him is screaming to run. Run and hide, it's what he does best and he does not want to see his family continue to kill each other. To have a hand in that when over just the last twenty-four hours, he's killed enough of them. But he made this decision before he died. He stood up and now he'll kneel down before this angel, marked since creation.
“I'm not the archangel,” Castiel protests, unsure and scared. He should be scared. He should feel all of it.
“You're the one driving this crazy train. You're in charge. What are we doing?”
Checking the lines. Gabriel drops the protective seal he'd placed around the room, there to keep humans out and to keep Castiel in, and they fly together. It's the first time Gabriel flies with any of his brothers since he left. He just wants this over with and there's no easy way to get that.
**
Gabriel stands with his wings flared out into imposing arcs. Firm and unmovable, this is his decision and he knows that at his back are a thousand angels who won't turn from his side. But in front of him there's Michael, even more stubborn, more righteous because Gabriel has never been righteous. He's been different. He's wanted pleasure, peace, and the sound of laughter.
“Lucifer is opposing our father's will!”
Gabriel knows this. He's watched Lucifer's jealousy twist into something new, shattering off into a thousand different emotions that Gabriel hasn't found names for yet. It's happening, he thinks, to all of them. The original four have found their niches, their emotions or motivators, and they're all splintering apart.
“But I'm not.”
Michael's move forward is hostile and Gabriel's wings sink that Michael would threaten him. “You oppose him by doing nothing. You're with us or you're against us. There is no middle ground.”
Gabriel can't find an answer because if it's one thing that Michael and Lucifer have in common, it's that they see in black and white. Even their wings don't show the color of the other angels. Of Gabriel's gold and Raphael's crimson red. Michael's flare out white behind him, barely seen against the blinding light of his grace.
It's made worse that whichever side he picks, he knows his garrison will follow him without question. He can't make a decision that could land them outside their father's, or even Michael's, good will. He has to stay for them, he has to stay and fight this war against his brother. His lover and his friend.
“Tell me where you want us, Michael.”
**
It's the first time Gabriel has returned to Heaven since he abandoned it. He can feel the heavy displacement of air from the energy of Castiel's wings beside him. Their spans overlap sometimes and Gabriel takes some comfort from it. Other than Castiel and Lucifer, these angels have not seen him in thousands of years, and part of him worries they won't even recognize him. Part of him worries they will.
Castiel sets them down in the middle of what was once a great city. Now there's a crack running down the middle of it and the buildings are falling in. There's ash clouding the river. In the distance, plumes of smoke rise up.
“Is that...?”
“The garden, yes.” Castiel speaks impassive as he stares across the distance. There's a veritable ocean between this city and the greater one, the one that had been created around him. Gabriel could close his eyes and see clearly the clash of angel's in the air above the churning waters. They churn now as well, violent swells and waves while the wind whips across the surface and all around them. Heaven reacts to the ill of the angels in it.
“Where is everyone?”
“On the beaches. I'm not...entirely sure you should show yourself yet. Raphael won't know you've surfaced.”
“I'm your secret weapon, huh?” Gabriel says with a quirked eyebrow, ignoring the unsettled spark across his wings while Castiel nods all fierce determination. A warrior in a way Gabriel is sure he never taught the angel to be when the thing he remembers most, even during the heat of the war, is Castiel's relaxed days on the ice fields with Anael and Uriel. “I guess I'll just wait here.”
“I won't be gone long.”
Gabriel waits while Castiel has left, walking along the abandoned and cracking streets. There's more than one imprint of wings. There's more than one blade impaled into the jasper stone that is the foundation of the city, some still smoking and up here they will for a long while yet. This city was teaming once with the song of laughter, with the unabashed spread of wings, the unashamed touch of grace.
This was his city once. His garrison's station.
He walks on until he finds the cracked remnants of a jasper fountain. The river runs above and fills it but the sides are fractured and the ashy water spills out and soaks his feet.
And this is his first trip home since he left? Had he expected it to be different?
**
Lucifer finds him once, as Heaven splits in half and taints the air and water and cities, and Gabriel sometimes thinks that he must be as well. Split and tainted. He stands on the edge of a recent battlefield, where the air still crackles with dying grace, and he can sense the other angel's arrival before Lucifer’s wings wrap around him.
“You hurt me,’ Lucifer says on his still melodious voice. Gabriel wouldn't think it just to hear him that Lucifer has killed hundreds of their brothers, either by his own hands or by the hands of those who trust him. Gabriel still stupidly trusts him.
“You do the same to me, brother,” Gabriel says
It's Lucifer's final attempt to sway Gabriel's decision but Gabriel has made his and it's not what any of them want. Lucifer leaves empty handed and Gabriel walks the beaten road until Michael casts Lucifer into the pit along with all the angels that opposed Heaven at Lucifer's side.
Gabriel can't stay after that.
Half of his garrison is dead. Their city in ruins. For the first time, Gabriel feels angry and he embraces it as he lands among the humans. They were the cause of this. Their violence and stupidity and arrogance. Gabriel hunts down the worst of them and takes all that he can from them.
**
Castiel finds Gabriel still at the fountain, trailing his fingers through the stained water, and he stands a few paces off. “We should move on. I brought you this.” Castiel holds out a new blade for him, shining and clean, but its seen battle just like all of them and Gabriel stands to take it in his grip.
“Where next?” Gabriel asks.
“To see the Winchesters.”
A grin catches Gabriel by surprise, his eyebrows lifting. “Bet they'll be glad to see me,” Gabriel says sarcastically, though in truth he kind of misses them. He wonders what they might be like without death breathing down their necks and only finds out when he and Castiel land in their motel room that death really does just follow them around.
Dean jumps half out of his skin when Castiel appears in front of him and he doesn't even look at Gabriel for a full heartbeat. “Jesus, Cas, I've been calling for- Gabriel?”
“Hey, Deano. Miss me?”
“...I miss the days when people didn't keep popping out at me from the dead.” Gabriel feels the sting and rolls his eyes, resisting the urge to curl his fingers back around the blade that's tucked out of sight and bury it in Dean's chest. Castiel looks so furious for a moment that Gabriel thinks he might be channelling the other angel after all. That purgatory hollowed him out just enough... Then Castiel is schooling his expression as Dean goes on. “I need you to help Sam.”
“There's nothing more I can do for him.” And there’s genuine regret to Castiel’s tone that even softens Dean’s expression.
“He locked himself in the bathroom the moment I got him here and refuses to come out. He won't even say anything.”
Castiel pauses a second, head cocked to the side. “He's still alive.”
“Well that's reassuring,” Dean snaps.
“I can't help him and that's not what I came here for.”
“Then why did you?”
“To say goodbye. It's time to return to this war indefinitely.”
Dean sighs, takes in the two of them for such a long moment that Gabriel feels like shifting on his feet but all he does is meet Dean's resigned stare. “I guess at least you actually said it this time. Maybe Gabe can teach you some mann- No. What am I saying? Just don’t be strangers, okay?”
“Of course not,” Castiel replies and Gabriel throws in some generic agreement since he’s pretty sure by this point that this is a forever sort of goodbye and Dean’s probably secretly glad at the prospect of getting angels out of his life for good. Hell, it’ll probably be the best thing an angel could ever do for him.
Castiel moves with a static shift of energy as his wings lift but Dean clears his throat, slides his gaze between them, and Gabriel wishes they could just get on with it. He’s supposed to hate Dean, not reluctantly admire the kid. It’d be a hell of a lot better for all of them if they could just be done with each other. “Just…thanks, okay?”
A minute nod from Castiel and they’re out of there, wingtips brushing together again as they fly. “Was there a point to all that?” Gabriel asks, looking across at Castiel as they fly the Earth’s energy pathways.
“I thought you could use a reminder of why we’re doing this.”
“You’re kind of a manipulative SOB aren’t you?”
“Did it work?”
Gabriel closes his eyes for a short moment. “Let’s go kill some evil angels.”
Even if evil never had anything to do with it. It's time to start thinking black and white or Earth, along with those boys back there, is gonna end up like Heaven. And that will be two homes gone to Hell.
**
Word slips out quickly. Castiel has an archangel at his side, one of the original four, and when Raphael is thought to be the only one still walking, that's big news. It ruffles feathers like tornadoes and there's hardly a supernatural creature that doesn't take notice. A fight on Earth between Raphael and Gabriel could well be as deadly as one between Michael and Lucifer and Gabriel finds himself wondering if this is always what it was about. A brother must kill another but not the two they'd all believed.
It brings Crowley back to them and it says something about how ravaged Heaven is when a demon - a king of Hell - can walk into Gabriel's jasper city without being destroyed at the gates. But Crowley comes alone and when the gathered angels - selected leaders of their ranks - raise their wings in anger, Castiel shouts at them.
“Hold yourselves. We have no quarrel with Hell.”
“Mighty kind of you to say.” Crowley steps up to them casually, unconcerned with the dozen angels gathered in the city center where the fountain resides. “I thought we might talk.” He glances to the others, allows his gaze to linger on Gabriel. “Privately. Though you can bring your guard dog too if you like.”
“Woof,” Gabriel deadpans in response but he does go along, after Castiel has dismissed the gathered angels back to their posts.
They return to Earth, the closest thing they have to neutral grounds even though it's not at all and Gabriel, at least, feels more at ease here. They stand outside Crowley's mansion, walls covered in Enochian warding and Gabriel lets out an impressed whistle.
“Not planning to assassinate us and hide the evidence are you?”
Crowley laughs. “Not at all. The enemy of my enemy. Follow me, boys.” He steps forward, through the high wall's gate, past the warding magic and leaves Gabriel and Castiel to exchange dubious glances. “Well?” he says with an arched eyebrow when he glances back and finds the two angels still on the other side of the wall.
Gabriel shrugs. There's no ill intent in the sigils or in the demon, so they step through.
“A little allowance in the wards,” Crowley explains as he leads them up to the mansion and into the dimly lit entrance hall. “Just for you two.”
They follow Crowley through a series of hallways, coming in the end to a sitting room, darkly furnished and dimly lit. It takes Gabriel a second to notice the Hellhound sitting in the corner, but when he does, he calls it over. The dog rises and comes. Gabriel settles back in one of the over large leather chairs.
“Couldn't get a barcalounger in here, huh?” he says as he scratches at the Hellhound's massive head and it drools a bit of blood onto his lap. He's well past being disturbed by any ichor.
Castiel remains standing. “Can we please get on with things?” And Crowley rolls his eyes, sharing what might be a conspiratorial look with Gabriel, if Gabriel had any clue what was going on.
“You angels are no fun. Can't even interest you in a drink?” He lifts a snifter of brandy from a liquor cabinet to the side of the room in gesture. When both of them refuse, Crowley sets it aside, but even Gabriel finds himself too curious to bother indulging. This game and these rules are not the ones they played by millennia ago. Change always has interested Gabriel.
“It's just like I said,” Crowley says. “The enemy of my enemy. If Raphael wants to release Lucifer then I'd very much like to stop it happening. I like the way things are now and not just because I'm king of Hell. I like this Earth. I'm in a business. I can't do that business if Lucifer gets free and wipes out all the currency. Or if Michael does.”
“You propose an alliance. With Hell,” Castiel says, skepticism making him scoff.
Crowley gives a single nod of his head. “My armies are at your disposal. I tried to strengthen them for you but I hear that didn't go over well.” He gives Gabriel a pointed look.
“The dead played their part already, they don't deserve to be dragged in again.”
“I guess you two would know something about that.” He looks them both over with something like pride. “And just look how dark you're turning out.”
“By any means,” Gabriel says, a shot at Castiel that hits home when Castiel shoots him a sideways glance though his stance doesn't change.
Crowley goes on. “Anyway, I expect you'll be less concerned with the dead demons fighting your battle than the dead angels. So have them.”
“At what cost?” Castiel asks and Crowley focuses on him.
“Just make sure you kill Raphael. And get all the damn rogue angels out of my territory. I don't need to be competing with them for souls.”
Gabriel wishes that he could be surprised when Castiel nods in agreement. But he's seen home now, watched the angels tear everything apart. It doesn't matter what they do in the end, it's still going to come down to archangel against archangel. Brother against brother. It'll still end bloody. But maybe this can buy them the edge they need. Maybe this is the change they need to finally end it.
He watches as Crowley crosses the room, as Castiel goes with the tug and pull into a kiss that looks familiar but this isn't their first deal. With a spark of possessiveness, he watches Castiel's grace flare under the magic of the contract.
“The battles must not happen on Earth,” Castiel says before it's done, against Crowley's mouth and the demon's expression turns down before he gives a nod of ascent and the contract shifts into something new. Crowley jerks Castiel up against him tighter with an arm around his waist and Gabriel is half-ready to force them apart when Crowley breaks away and laughs.
“You're getting better at that.”
Gabriel is surprised when Castiel reacts to the sneer in Crowley's voice, shoving Crowley back against the wall. A second kiss is a crush of lips that lasts only an instant before Castiel steps back swiftly. “We have work to do.”
Even Crowley looks winded this time and alongside the possession, Gabriel feels a spark of pride. Crowley straightens himself, returning to his snifter of brandy and pouring each of them a finger without asking this time. “All work and no play make angels have a stick up their ass.”
They each take their drink.
In the next days, they amass the armies of Hell.
**
Castiel leaves Gabriel to watch over Crowley and their new allies.
Gabriel's never had the pleasure of a firsthand visit to Hell but...he's certain it shouldn't be like this and he tells Crowley as much.
“And what were you expecting?” Crowley asks and Gabriel shrugs.
“I dunno. Screams, chaos. Kind of torn between freezing cold or boiling heat. Maybe it'd switch back and forth spontaneously. Not...this.”
It looks how he might have expected it on first glance, which is not much different from Heaven in places. There are ice fields and barren lands. But patterns of blood are frozen in the ice and it soaks the thawed ground outside of it. There are cities constructed of Earth and stone. And...body parts and bones. There are Hellhounds standing guard like junk yard dogs. Human souls in their own personal Hells, like the souls in Heaven. And demons. Thousands and thousands of demons, more than there could ever be angels.
But past all that? There's order. There are no screams, no pleading. Gabriel watches the demons move among them and they all seem to have a job to do, business to attend to. It's possibly more traumatizing than if he'd walked into what Hell should be like. “I feel like I walked into a law firm or something.”
Crowley laughs. “I told you, I'm here to run a business.”
“It's scary.”
“How similar Heaven and Hell can really be? Let me show you the armies.”
They walk from one city to another, a large stone castle dominating this one. Crowley takes him into the highest tower to overlook the lands and in the distance, he can see fire. A hole in the walls of Hell and there must be a thousand demons all guarding it. A funnel of the fire licks in occasionally and draws a shiver from Gabriel.
“Is that purgatory?”
“Mhm. Forced a gateway. Anything we need to get Raphael is straight through there.”
The fire licks inside Hell again, testing the demons and drawing away. Hell's climate is tepid and Gabriel imagines he can feel the heat of purgatory. It feels angry to him and maybe he's spent too long as a Pagan but there are some things that shouldn't be messed with. Not even for an archangel or a king of Hell. “You think that was a good idea?”
“I think we're out of options.”
“Have you taken anything from it yet?”
“Just the angels but you put those back. And you, of course,” Crowley says with a long slide of his gaze over Gabriel.
The flames break free again, a tunnel of them that scorches across the ground until it's blazing along the wall that surrounds the castle before it withdrawals. It leaves behind a black furrow in the ground, brings up a rise of screams that Gabriel had thought was missing, and some hundred demons have fallen.
“Well that's new,” Crowley says, unconcerned to anyone that can't see past the human he carts around with him. But Gabriel can see past that, into an agitated swirling of black smoke. The same agitation hums within his own human form.
“I think we'd better get out of here.”
Gabriel says it but he doesn't move, his hands pressed on the high ledge of the castle while he stares down into the entrance of purgatory. He's sure he sees a golden eye in the flames and the moment he fixes on it, it fixes on him and Gabriel freezes.
There's a raucous scream that doesn't come from any of the demons and three tunnels of fire come bursting into Hell, scattering the demons that can't do anything against it. They twist and form together and from them, a bird of flame launches into the air. It circles once, massive head tilted, eyes searching and when they find Gabriel a second time, it screams again and dives for him.
“Holy-“ Gabriel cuts off, snaps his wings out in blazes of light and takes off from the castle top, feeling the heat of the bird engulfing where he'd just been.
And he can't outrun it. There's no cheating death and Gabriel knows. Pagan or angel, he knows, and he knows he skipped a damn big part of it. His wings crack with the noise of whips as he darts across Hell but the bird is on him, boiling the air in its wake and Gabriel keeps falling into the drafts. He thinks Hell must be destroyed in its path as well and somewhere below him, Crowley is yelling his name.
He risks a glance behind him and sees the bird's white hot talons stretching out for him, a second from ripping at his wings and Gabriel does the only thing he can think to do. He folds his wings, curls into a ball and falls. The bird’s talons close a second too late, scorching through the edges of Gabriel's wing. It dives to pursue him and it's still there when Gabriel slams into the blood soaked ground and he can feel the heat of its great wings curving over him.
It screams waves of fire into the air and across the landscape the ice fields start to melt.
“Hey!”
Gabriel's vision swims when Castiel appears on the scene, Crowley at his side, and the bird hesitates as they approach Gabriel. Castiel is out of his vessel, blinding light, and even still, the bird dwarfs him. Yet it pauses when he steps forward, unwilling to go after the living.
Crowley steps between him and the scene, kneeling down. “Let’s get you out of here.”
The bird gives an outraged cry and Gabriel only has a second to catch the devastation of Hell. The castle they had stood on is engulfed in flame. But Crowley touches him and they're gone, back to a green field on Earth, the bird screaming in their absence before it flees Hell, taking all traces of fire and leaving it black and smoking.
**
Part Three: Hell