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ratherastory) wrote2011-03-17 12:45 am
ratherastory) wrote2011-03-17 12:45 am
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Part 1 —Purgatory
Master Post
Go to Prologue
Part 1 ―Purgatory
It feels a lot like exile. There is nowhere for a disgraced archangel to go with a newly-reborn soul that won't attract the wrong kinds of attention. Earth is too dangerous, Heaven is unwelcoming, and Hell... well. Gabriel has never been to Purgatory, but it feels fitting enough. After all, Purgatory houses all those creatures that don't belong anywhere else after their death.
Purgatory feels like nothing he's ever experienced before. In fact, it feels like nothing. When he first arrives, his vessel feels more like an ill-fitting suit than it every has before. There is nothing here, and Gabriel has always been happiest when surrounded by the tangible. Sam squirms in his arms, making a discontented noise.
“I guess we're going to need a place to stay, if we're going to be living here,” Gabriel says to him. He snaps his fingers out of habit, and is a little startled when he finds himself standing in what appears to be a fully-furnished living room. It's not quite what he had in mind, but beggars can't be choosers.
It's not so different here than it was when he was living in the world. Outside the days pass the same way as they did before, and the seasons change the way he remembers. The calendar hanging on the wall in the kitchen tells him it's May 2nd in this world, though there's no year. He and Sam live in a small white house with blue trim, and when he wishes for curtains he's rewarded with white lace hanging over the windows, letting the afternoon sun drift in while keeping the rest of the world out. It's almost the same, except for the constant feeling of impermanence. The people here speak to him out of necessity, when he chooses to interact with them, but he can't help but feel that they disappear as soon as he turns his back, that the tiny grocery store vanishes once his errands have been run.
He's never been to Purgatory before, although he spent a few afternoons having lively discussions about it with Dante Alighieri back in the day. It's nothing like what the man dreamt up, and certainly nothing like all the lies he told the poor guy during those afternoon talks ―because, really, what fun would it have been to tell him that, in truth, he had no idea what he was talking about? Instead, it's rather grey, when he looks too closely at any of it. The colours leech away, leaving nothingness in their wake, and it pulls at something deep inside him that aches so fiercely that he's forced to look away before it overcomes him. It's like staring into the void, as though his mind's eye has gone blind. Sometimes outside, the street vanishes, melts away into fog.
Sam is a sweet-tempered baby. He cries when he's hungry or in need of changing, but otherwise he's quiet, and just watches the world with large blue eyes as though he's already trying to memorize and catalogue its contents. It's hard to remember that this is only a manifestation of Sam's soul, rather than a real baby, just as his own body is no longer truly the vessel he inhabited for so long. Gabriel wonders now what happened to that man ―as devout as they came at the time― who had no idea what he was agreeing to when Gabriel asked him for permission to use his body to walk the earth. Wherever he is now, Gabriel hopes it's nice.
“You're lucky, you know,” Gabriel tells the tiny soul toward the end of the first day. There's a nursery already set up on the second floor of the white house, with sunflowers painted on the walls. “Not every soul gets a chance like this, to be put back together a second time around. I can't guess at the will of God anymore these days, but if I deserve a shot at redemption, then I guess you deserve one even more.”
The baby gurgles, but he can't tell if it understands anything he's said. He doesn't know anything about newborns.
“I didn't think you could do it,” he confides. “I didn't think anyone could. It was suicide, and we all knew it, and you went ahead and did it anyway. I still find it hard to believe you succeeded.”
The baby gives a sleepy yawn and wriggles in its blanket, and he laughs ruefully.
“Yeah, okay. Maybe you're not really ready to talk about that yet.”
Gabriel doesn't know the first thing about taking care of babies ―human or otherwise. He's spent several lifetimes leaving what few children he has to their own devices, and now he finds himself entirely at a loss when confronted with this tiny being. The baby is all waving fists and kicking feet and bright, big eyes. It's a beautiful soul really, he finds himself thinking, looking down at it ―so bright and full of promise. It looks nothing like what it will become, after twenty-eight years or so of trial and temptation and manipulation by outside forces. He chucks the baby under the chin.
“I guess we'll have to see if we can do better than before, kiddo.”
~*~
Sam is crying. Howling might be a more accurate word, Gabriel thinks a little desperately. It's been going on for hours, and nothing he's tried has worked so far. The baby's face is red, screwed up with some sort of undefined baby anguish, lashes wet and clumped together with tears. He screams and cries and hiccups when he runs out of breath, only to start up again a few seconds later. He's bigger now, too, and Gabriel's arms ache from holding him and bouncing him and rocking him.
He tries singing, first in English, then in German, then in all the other languages he can think of, but nothing seems to help. He tries Enochian, but that only helps for a moment before the screaming redoubles in intensity. He drops, exhausted, into the armchair in the living room, the baby propped on his lap, still crying.
“Come on, kiddo, work with me, here. You've been pretty good all this time, so what's the fuss about today?” He bounces Sam on his knee, head cradled in his hand. “Come on, shh,” he tries, feeling a little as though he might burst into tears himself at any moment.
Nothing. The screaming stops eventually, but Sam keeps crying and hiccupping, tiny limbs flailing as soon as Gabriel stops restraining him. So he tries again, gets up with the baby in his arms, and walks into the kitchen and back up again, patting the tiny back and wondering just how humans do this over and over again. He walks him in circles, debates trying a bottle another time ―except that that's obviously not the problem here. It's not even like any of this is real, he thinks angrily. It's just a metaphorical representation of... oh.
Suddenly he feels like a damned idiot. He turns, and checks the calendar in the kitchen, and mentally kicks himself. It's November 2nd, and he really should have seen this coming. He brings up a hand and strokes the baby's head, the hair soft and fine under his fingertips, before walking slowly back to the living room.
“I'm sorry, kiddo, I can't bring her back for you,” he tells Sam, rubbing circles on his back. “But it'll get better, you'll see. You're not loved any less when she's gone.” He's not really sure what he's saying, but he thinks he can understand why Sam is inconsolable: he's lived without a parent's love too.
He gathers Sam up even closer in his arms, nestles the baby's head against his collarbone and lies back so that Sam can snuggle up against his chest. A few moments later Sam lets out a hiccupping sigh, and the crying stops, leaving Gabriel's ears ringing in the sudden silence.
“There you go,” he says softly, still letting his hand rub soothing circles on Sam's back. “There you go. Go to sleep, Sammy. It'll all look better in the morning.”
~*~
~*~
Something comes scratching at the door. Gabriel can hear it snuffling loudly just outside, as well as the scrape of long, sharp claws against the side of the house. He pulls Sam into his arms, and the boy is only too happy for the attention, clinging to him like a very warm limpet. Gabriel carefully walks through the house and sets up wards and barriers before every door, every window. He thinks that he might just be beginning to understand why John Winchester did the things he did.
The windows rattle in their panes, and he thinks he might be hearing the wind pick up outside, shrieking and howling. This may look like the world he left behind, but that's a surface illusion, something he's managed to forget in the months he's spent here. The very air turns malevolent, as the creature's influence makes itself felt in spite of all the protective measures Gabriel has taken. Sam sucks his thumb pensively, cheek against Gabriel's shoulder, apparently unafraid, and for the first time Gabriel wonders if the threat isn't greater to himself than to the child, at least for now. Eliminate the guardian, and the ward becomes easy prey, after all. He double-checks the wards, traces a banishing sigil on the wall just to be sure, and he feels the air around him ripple with spent energy as he does so. He lifts a hand to stroke Sam's head.
“I don't think it's going to be safe around here all that much longer, kiddo.”
He doesn’t put Sam to bed that night, just lets him fall asleep in his arms as he sits on the sofa. Somehow, the idea of leaving him alone in his crib right now gives Gabriel an unpleasant creeping feeling up his spine. Outside, the night sky glows red and saffron, the air sulphurous and thick. It comes coiling in through the cracks under the doors, filling his nostrils with the noxious scent, but Sam sleeps on unperturbed. Nothing gets inside, though Gabriel can still hear the sounds of snuffling and scratching and scraping, and he holds Sam tightly, as though he might vanish or be pulled away at any moment.
All at once Gabriel finds himself seething with rage. This is his home, after all. How dare that thing, whatever it is, threaten its sanctity? He gets to his feet, careful not to wake the sleeping baby, and stalks to the front door, where the creature has renewed its assault upon the premises. One hand holding Sam firmly in place, he stretches out his arm and
“Ola loadohi micaolz busd paid!” he intones quietly, relishing the power that vibrates deep within his core. “Fuck off, you smelly bastard!”
The scratching stops.
Gabriel gives the sleeping baby a smug look. “That showed ‘em, didn’t it bucko? Guess I still have a little of the old mojo left in me after all. Come on, time for bed. I don’t know about you, but after that, I could use a nap.”
When he goes out the front door in the morning, though, there are grooves more than two inches deep carved into the wood of the front door, left by claws twice as thick as his fingers.
~*~
Gabriel has never considered himself to be sentimental. Angels aren't built for human emotion, and pagan gods are definitely not known for their compassion or caring for human affairs. He's spent millennia flirting with chaos, playing tricks on the other gods, amusing himself at the expense of humans ―and if some of them died, well, that was the price they paid for their own hubris, wasn't it? It feels alien, therefore, and more than a little frightening, to find himself coming so close to experiencing what his Father gave to humans without so much as a second thought.
Except that now his hands are clammy, and his heart seems to be lodged somewhere in his throat. He forces himself not to move, to stay exactly where he is, on one knee on the floor.
“Come on, Sammy, you can do it,” he says, hoping he sounds encouraging. What does he know about talking to children, anyway?
Sam is standing next to the little coffee table in the living room where he pushed himself up off the floor a moment ago, wearing his favourite overalls with the fire truck on the front and a red t-shirt with a banana stain on the collar left over from a breakfast mishap, and he's staring just past Gabriel as though he can see someone else there, standing just out of sight. And he probably can, Gabriel tells himself. He's still not sure how this whole set-up is meant to work, whether Sam has any memories of his old life at all, whether what he’s experiencing is what Gabriel sees.
“Come on,” he repeats, and holds out his hand.
Sam lets go of the table, still staring at him, then takes one wobbly step forward, then another, and Gabriel feels a grin spread over his face. There's an unfamiliar warmth in his chest, and it increases as Sam stumbles toward him, an answering smile on his own small face. The kid has dimples even now, at ten months, and a few tiny little teeth that flash every time he smiles. It takes a moment for Gabriel to figure out just what that warm feeling is, and by then Sam has walked the whole six steps to get to him. So he scoops the boy up in his arms, congratulates him, and takes him off to the kitchen for an extra banana as a reward. He figures that eventually they can graduate to chocolate, but for now anything banana-related is the best bribe he can come up with.
Sam turns a year old without any fanfare. Gabriel eats the entire chocolate cake by himself ―cake isn't good for babies after all― and decides that this life really isn't so bad. Sam sits in his plastic high chair with turtle decals and beats an erratic tattoo against the white tray with his sippy cup, then looks up at Gabriel and grins like he's just invented music all on his own. Gabriel licks chocolate off his fingers, then motions at him with an index finger.
“Don't look so pleased with yourself. I once convinced an African tribe to drum for two consecutive nights in order to appease me because I was a vengeful god and was going to strike down all their cattle.” Sam makes a face and bangs his sippy cup a little more forcefully. “Yeah, okay, not especially nice, but I was impersonating an angry pagan god ―they're not meant to be nice.” Gabriel purses his lips when Sam bashes the sippy cup so hard against the tray that the lid nearly comes off and grabs it before there's an apple juice-related disaster all over the floor. “Okay, fine, you made your point. Not funny, Uncle Gabe.”
He grabs Sam under the armpits, hauls him into the air and swings him around until he kicks and shrieks with delight. When the kid is breathless and dizzy, he settles him on his hip.
“Happy birthday, Sammy.”
~*~
Sam's first word is 'Dean,' not that that comes as a surprise to Gabriel. He's a little surprised, maybe, because he's pretty sure that babies repeat sounds they hear on a daily basis, but then again, Sam isn't really a baby. He is a late talker, though, which is sort of surprising. The amount that kid talked as an adult, and from all reports when he was younger too, Gabriel figured he'd be talking non-stop by the time he was eight months. Instead, Sam is well over a year old when he utters his first word.
After that, though, it's as though someone opened the floodgates. The first cautious 'Dean?' is followed by new word after new word, and within about two months Sam is stringing the words together to form slightly broken sentences. He develops the habit of running up to Gabriel, grabbing his hand in both of his, and trying to drag him bodily to whatever new thing it is he's discovered that needs identifying, all urgency and big blue eyes.
“Where Dean?” he asks, the day he figures out how to formulate questions.
“Dean isn't here,” Gabriel replies, which doesn't answer the question at all, and the glare he gets from Sam tells him that the boy is wise to his slippery ways. He sighs. “I don't know where Dean is. You're just going to have to be patient, and maybe one day you'll see him again, okay?”
Sam sulks. Which Gabriel totally sympathizes with.
“Gabe, where Dean?”
The kid's persistent, Gabriel has to give him that. He blows out his cheeks, pinches the bridge of his nose as he tries to figure out just how to explain to this still-tiny soul that his brother is in a completely different place and time.
“Play with Dean, Gabe?”
“We can’t right now, sport. Dean can’t come to you right now, but maybe someday we can go to him, okay?”
“No! Want Dean!” Sam’s face turns red as it becomes obvious even to his still-developing mind that he’s not going to get what he wants, and within seconds he’s gone from quiet disappointment to ear-splitting rage.
“Holy… there are dogs that can’t hear you, bucko!” Gabriel tries to scoop up the wriggling, kicking bundle into his arms, but to no avail. Sam squirms and hits and even bites him once, all the while keeping up the same eardrum-shattering levels of shrieking. “Sam, calm down, for the love of –okay, poor choice of words.”
After ten minutes of this Gabriel gives up any pretence of control and just drops Sam back into his crib to wait for him to exhaust himself out of his tantrum. It takes a lot longer than he imagined it would –Sam’s been such a quiet kid that Gabriel kind of allowed himself to be lulled into a false sense of security. He leans in the doorway to the bedroom, arms folded over his chest, and listens as the screaming turns into desolate wailing, then into mournful, hiccupping sobs. It takes a while, but eventually all that’s left is the soft sound of Sam sniffling into his blankets, and Gabriel risks peeking over the side of the crib at the blotchy, tear-stained face.
“You done?” There’s no answer, so he pushes on. “Okay. You take a nap, sleep the rest of this off, and when you’re truly done, we’ll have dinner.”
“Want Dean.”
“Yeah, well, none of us ever get what we really want in life, bucko. That’s the absurd tragedy of it all.”
~*~
~*~
One morning the street outside turns red with blood. Gabriel stands on the stoop of the little white house and stares as the pavement liquefies before his eyes and runs dark and crimson. One by one the neighbouring houses –always a little indistinct unless he truly forced himself to look at them– begin to fade into the mist that’s always there. Sometimes the mist is so thin he can barely perceive it, and at other times it swirls thick and yellow, coating everything like a blanket and leaving behind a film of corruption, but it’s always there, whether or not he can see it.
The river of blood swells, overflowing its banks, and as it begins to lap at the doorstep Gabriel sees it begin to simmer and bubble. Something terrible seethes just beneath the surface, and while once upon a time he would have plunged a hand in to pull it out, now he pulls away from it, checking instinctively over his shoulder to make sure his charge is safe.
Sam is sitting on the living room carpet, playing with a set of Lego blocks, though whatever it is he’s making has no recognizable shape as yet. He looks up, perhaps sensing that something unusual is happening, but he says nothing, just stares at Gabriel, as though waiting for him to make it right again.
“Looks like we’re going to have to move, kiddo.”
He’s not surprised when their new home turns out to be a sparsely-furnished motel room. The older Sam gets, the clearer it has become to Gabriel that the world they live in is closely modelled after the one Sam lived in before. It seems only right that Sam should have somewhere familiar to grow up, even if the thought depresses Gabriel beyond words. He has found that, while he can alter the details of the place, the fundaments are beyond his ability to manipulate, fuelled directly by something inherent to Sam. Even if he could change them, he finds he is loath to indulge the idea. It’s not his place to change everything in Sam’s life, after all, nor to try to change who he’s meant to become, no matter the consequences. Gabriel has learned that lesson the hard way, he thinks, looking over at Sam, who has settled contentedly in the center of one of the twin beds, and is grinning at him, dimples out in full force.
“Stay with Daddy and Dean and Gabe,” he says, and Gabriel can only nod dumbly, at a loss for words.
~*~
Long before Sam turns even four years old, Gabriel has come to the conclusion that he’s not the only presence in the boy’s life, such as it is. He often catches Sam talking softly to someone else under his breath, sometimes giggling breathlessly at some joke Gabriel can’t hear. If Gabriel were human, and Sam a regular human child, he’d probably ascribe it to a vivid imagination –imaginary friends and the like. As it is, he checks very carefully to make sure there aren’t any evil forces currently at play in this tiny corner of Purgatory. It’s been safe enough so far, but Gabriel is no one’s fool. He knows what’s lurking in the mists, shrouded from sight, and eventually even this new home will have to be abandoned in favour of safer ground. He thinks he understands why ―Sam’s life has been a nomadic one, never staying in the same town for more than a few months at a time. Even if Gabriel's reasons for picking up and moving on aren't the same, the end result is.
Purgatory is the place monsters go when they die: his own presence here might well be a testament to that. Purgatory is not the purview of angels, and as a result he never gave the place any thought, indeed never even knew where it was. Only an angel could kill another angel, and their energy simply returned to God when they died. In certain cases, Gabriel heard of the worst of the fallen angels being banished to hell, to languish in eternal torment next to the Cage which held Lucifer prisoner, but those were just stories, never confirmed.
Sam is chattering away happily under his breath to someone Gabriel can’t see. He’s playing a rather elaborate-looking game involving two matchbox cars racing each other along the floor of the motel room, not even looking up when Gabriel lets himself fall gracelessly onto his bed and switches on the television. When Sam’s talking gets too loud to ignore, he turns to look at him.
“Who are you talking to, Sammy?”
He gets a flat look, as though he’s lost his mind. “Dean.”
“Dean isn’t here.” Gabriel doesn’t know why he feels compelled to say it.
Sam shrugs. “I can see him.”
“Can you?” Gabriel sits forward, intrigued in spite of himself. “What’s he like?”
That gets him a puzzled look. “I don’t know. He's like Dean.”
“Does he ever tell you to do things?”
“Yeah,” Sam is unconcerned, making one of the cars roll along a frayed piece of carpeting.
“Is it things you don’t want to do? Bad things?” God only knows what sort of nefarious creatures are lurking around, and Gabriel suddenly has the mental image of long-dead succubi creeping in the window at night to murmur terrible things in Sammy’s ear.
Sam scowls. “He’s bossy. I told him that I don’t have to do what he tells me this time, only what you tell me, but he doesn’t like that.” He looks up at Gabriel guilelessly. “He doesn’t like you much.”
Gabriel snorts. “I’ll bet he doesn’t.”
“Daddy says you’re not real.”
Gabriel feels a headache building behind his eyes, even though he knows it’s not real. It just figures, he thinks bitterly, that he has to compete for Sam’s attention with the living memories of John and Dean Winchester. Because his life just isn't hard enough.
~*~
~*~
“I know why we move all the time.”
Sam is sitting curled up in the center of a musty bedspread, knees drawn up to his chest. The bed is old, the posts made of brass, and it creaks and groans whenever anyone sits on it, or moves, or breathes too hard in its direction.
“You do?” Gabriel hasn’t exactly made a secret of it, but he’s never really bothered to explain what he’s doing. Sam’s a child, for all that he’s just the manifestation of his soul in this place, and he doesn’t feel the need to justify or explain himself at all to a boy who’s only beginning to learn how to do long division.
Sam reaches under his pillow, and pulls out a battered leather journal. “Dean says I shouldn’t have read this, because it’s Dad’s, but…”
Gabriel blinks. “Where did you get that?”
He gets a shrug in response. “I took it when Dad wasn’t looking. He thinks he keeps it hidden, but his hiding places aren’t that good. Are monsters real, Gabe?”
Gabriel comes to sit next to him. “What do you think, bucko?”
“Dad says they’re real, in his journal. Dad doesn’t lie.”
“Doesn’t he? If he told you monsters aren’t real all this time, and he says they are in his journal, that means one of those two things is a lie. Adults lie, Sam. It happens all the time.”
“So monsters are real.” Sam ducks his head, bangs falling in his eyes. “And Dad hunts them. Dean says he’s a superhero, like Batman. He helps people.”
Gabriel finds he doesn’t have much to say on the subject of John Winchester. He never came across him while he was alive, and he’s never had occasion to care about what he was like as a human being, or what his parenting skills were like. He’s a little miffed about John’s memory insisting that angels aren’t real and that Gabriel must therefore be a imaginary friend. He can just imagine John's irritable “And you’re too old for that kind of nonsense, Sammy!” But overall he doesn’t give the man more than a passing thought every so often.
“You could look at it that way.”
Abruptly Sam drops the journal into his lap, and curls up against Gabriel, leaning against his arm. “What if he dies like my mom?”
“He won’t.”
“How do you know? I mean, something got Mom, and that means something could get Dad, and if something gets Dad, then what’s going to happen to us?”
Gabriel has to think about how to answer that. “I know the way I know a lot of things you and your family don’t know. I know that your Dad isn’t going to die for many, many years, for one thing. So you don’t have to worry about that.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
He rolls his eyes. “I’m never wrong. But on the off-chance that I am, then I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. That’s what I’m here for, right?”
Sam looks up at him, eyes bright with unshed tears. “Do you promise?”
Gabriel figures he should be used to the unexpected surges of warmth he keeps feeling. They’ve been happening for years, now, and they surprise him every time. He sighs.
“Yeah, kiddo. I promise.”
~*~
Go to Part 2
Go to Prologue
Part 1 ―Purgatory
It feels a lot like exile. There is nowhere for a disgraced archangel to go with a newly-reborn soul that won't attract the wrong kinds of attention. Earth is too dangerous, Heaven is unwelcoming, and Hell... well. Gabriel has never been to Purgatory, but it feels fitting enough. After all, Purgatory houses all those creatures that don't belong anywhere else after their death.
Purgatory feels like nothing he's ever experienced before. In fact, it feels like nothing. When he first arrives, his vessel feels more like an ill-fitting suit than it every has before. There is nothing here, and Gabriel has always been happiest when surrounded by the tangible. Sam squirms in his arms, making a discontented noise.
“I guess we're going to need a place to stay, if we're going to be living here,” Gabriel says to him. He snaps his fingers out of habit, and is a little startled when he finds himself standing in what appears to be a fully-furnished living room. It's not quite what he had in mind, but beggars can't be choosers.
It's not so different here than it was when he was living in the world. Outside the days pass the same way as they did before, and the seasons change the way he remembers. The calendar hanging on the wall in the kitchen tells him it's May 2nd in this world, though there's no year. He and Sam live in a small white house with blue trim, and when he wishes for curtains he's rewarded with white lace hanging over the windows, letting the afternoon sun drift in while keeping the rest of the world out. It's almost the same, except for the constant feeling of impermanence. The people here speak to him out of necessity, when he chooses to interact with them, but he can't help but feel that they disappear as soon as he turns his back, that the tiny grocery store vanishes once his errands have been run.
He's never been to Purgatory before, although he spent a few afternoons having lively discussions about it with Dante Alighieri back in the day. It's nothing like what the man dreamt up, and certainly nothing like all the lies he told the poor guy during those afternoon talks ―because, really, what fun would it have been to tell him that, in truth, he had no idea what he was talking about? Instead, it's rather grey, when he looks too closely at any of it. The colours leech away, leaving nothingness in their wake, and it pulls at something deep inside him that aches so fiercely that he's forced to look away before it overcomes him. It's like staring into the void, as though his mind's eye has gone blind. Sometimes outside, the street vanishes, melts away into fog.
Sam is a sweet-tempered baby. He cries when he's hungry or in need of changing, but otherwise he's quiet, and just watches the world with large blue eyes as though he's already trying to memorize and catalogue its contents. It's hard to remember that this is only a manifestation of Sam's soul, rather than a real baby, just as his own body is no longer truly the vessel he inhabited for so long. Gabriel wonders now what happened to that man ―as devout as they came at the time― who had no idea what he was agreeing to when Gabriel asked him for permission to use his body to walk the earth. Wherever he is now, Gabriel hopes it's nice.
“You're lucky, you know,” Gabriel tells the tiny soul toward the end of the first day. There's a nursery already set up on the second floor of the white house, with sunflowers painted on the walls. “Not every soul gets a chance like this, to be put back together a second time around. I can't guess at the will of God anymore these days, but if I deserve a shot at redemption, then I guess you deserve one even more.”
The baby gurgles, but he can't tell if it understands anything he's said. He doesn't know anything about newborns.
“I didn't think you could do it,” he confides. “I didn't think anyone could. It was suicide, and we all knew it, and you went ahead and did it anyway. I still find it hard to believe you succeeded.”
The baby gives a sleepy yawn and wriggles in its blanket, and he laughs ruefully.
“Yeah, okay. Maybe you're not really ready to talk about that yet.”
Gabriel doesn't know the first thing about taking care of babies ―human or otherwise. He's spent several lifetimes leaving what few children he has to their own devices, and now he finds himself entirely at a loss when confronted with this tiny being. The baby is all waving fists and kicking feet and bright, big eyes. It's a beautiful soul really, he finds himself thinking, looking down at it ―so bright and full of promise. It looks nothing like what it will become, after twenty-eight years or so of trial and temptation and manipulation by outside forces. He chucks the baby under the chin.
“I guess we'll have to see if we can do better than before, kiddo.”
~*~
Sam is crying. Howling might be a more accurate word, Gabriel thinks a little desperately. It's been going on for hours, and nothing he's tried has worked so far. The baby's face is red, screwed up with some sort of undefined baby anguish, lashes wet and clumped together with tears. He screams and cries and hiccups when he runs out of breath, only to start up again a few seconds later. He's bigger now, too, and Gabriel's arms ache from holding him and bouncing him and rocking him.
He tries singing, first in English, then in German, then in all the other languages he can think of, but nothing seems to help. He tries Enochian, but that only helps for a moment before the screaming redoubles in intensity. He drops, exhausted, into the armchair in the living room, the baby propped on his lap, still crying.
“Come on, kiddo, work with me, here. You've been pretty good all this time, so what's the fuss about today?” He bounces Sam on his knee, head cradled in his hand. “Come on, shh,” he tries, feeling a little as though he might burst into tears himself at any moment.
Nothing. The screaming stops eventually, but Sam keeps crying and hiccupping, tiny limbs flailing as soon as Gabriel stops restraining him. So he tries again, gets up with the baby in his arms, and walks into the kitchen and back up again, patting the tiny back and wondering just how humans do this over and over again. He walks him in circles, debates trying a bottle another time ―except that that's obviously not the problem here. It's not even like any of this is real, he thinks angrily. It's just a metaphorical representation of... oh.
Suddenly he feels like a damned idiot. He turns, and checks the calendar in the kitchen, and mentally kicks himself. It's November 2nd, and he really should have seen this coming. He brings up a hand and strokes the baby's head, the hair soft and fine under his fingertips, before walking slowly back to the living room.
“I'm sorry, kiddo, I can't bring her back for you,” he tells Sam, rubbing circles on his back. “But it'll get better, you'll see. You're not loved any less when she's gone.” He's not really sure what he's saying, but he thinks he can understand why Sam is inconsolable: he's lived without a parent's love too.
He gathers Sam up even closer in his arms, nestles the baby's head against his collarbone and lies back so that Sam can snuggle up against his chest. A few moments later Sam lets out a hiccupping sigh, and the crying stops, leaving Gabriel's ears ringing in the sudden silence.
“There you go,” he says softly, still letting his hand rub soothing circles on Sam's back. “There you go. Go to sleep, Sammy. It'll all look better in the morning.”
~*~
~*~
Something comes scratching at the door. Gabriel can hear it snuffling loudly just outside, as well as the scrape of long, sharp claws against the side of the house. He pulls Sam into his arms, and the boy is only too happy for the attention, clinging to him like a very warm limpet. Gabriel carefully walks through the house and sets up wards and barriers before every door, every window. He thinks that he might just be beginning to understand why John Winchester did the things he did.
The windows rattle in their panes, and he thinks he might be hearing the wind pick up outside, shrieking and howling. This may look like the world he left behind, but that's a surface illusion, something he's managed to forget in the months he's spent here. The very air turns malevolent, as the creature's influence makes itself felt in spite of all the protective measures Gabriel has taken. Sam sucks his thumb pensively, cheek against Gabriel's shoulder, apparently unafraid, and for the first time Gabriel wonders if the threat isn't greater to himself than to the child, at least for now. Eliminate the guardian, and the ward becomes easy prey, after all. He double-checks the wards, traces a banishing sigil on the wall just to be sure, and he feels the air around him ripple with spent energy as he does so. He lifts a hand to stroke Sam's head.
“I don't think it's going to be safe around here all that much longer, kiddo.”
He doesn’t put Sam to bed that night, just lets him fall asleep in his arms as he sits on the sofa. Somehow, the idea of leaving him alone in his crib right now gives Gabriel an unpleasant creeping feeling up his spine. Outside, the night sky glows red and saffron, the air sulphurous and thick. It comes coiling in through the cracks under the doors, filling his nostrils with the noxious scent, but Sam sleeps on unperturbed. Nothing gets inside, though Gabriel can still hear the sounds of snuffling and scratching and scraping, and he holds Sam tightly, as though he might vanish or be pulled away at any moment.
All at once Gabriel finds himself seething with rage. This is his home, after all. How dare that thing, whatever it is, threaten its sanctity? He gets to his feet, careful not to wake the sleeping baby, and stalks to the front door, where the creature has renewed its assault upon the premises. One hand holding Sam firmly in place, he stretches out his arm and
“Ola loadohi micaolz busd paid!” he intones quietly, relishing the power that vibrates deep within his core. “Fuck off, you smelly bastard!”
The scratching stops.
Gabriel gives the sleeping baby a smug look. “That showed ‘em, didn’t it bucko? Guess I still have a little of the old mojo left in me after all. Come on, time for bed. I don’t know about you, but after that, I could use a nap.”
When he goes out the front door in the morning, though, there are grooves more than two inches deep carved into the wood of the front door, left by claws twice as thick as his fingers.
~*~
Gabriel has never considered himself to be sentimental. Angels aren't built for human emotion, and pagan gods are definitely not known for their compassion or caring for human affairs. He's spent millennia flirting with chaos, playing tricks on the other gods, amusing himself at the expense of humans ―and if some of them died, well, that was the price they paid for their own hubris, wasn't it? It feels alien, therefore, and more than a little frightening, to find himself coming so close to experiencing what his Father gave to humans without so much as a second thought.
Except that now his hands are clammy, and his heart seems to be lodged somewhere in his throat. He forces himself not to move, to stay exactly where he is, on one knee on the floor.
“Come on, Sammy, you can do it,” he says, hoping he sounds encouraging. What does he know about talking to children, anyway?
Sam is standing next to the little coffee table in the living room where he pushed himself up off the floor a moment ago, wearing his favourite overalls with the fire truck on the front and a red t-shirt with a banana stain on the collar left over from a breakfast mishap, and he's staring just past Gabriel as though he can see someone else there, standing just out of sight. And he probably can, Gabriel tells himself. He's still not sure how this whole set-up is meant to work, whether Sam has any memories of his old life at all, whether what he’s experiencing is what Gabriel sees.
“Come on,” he repeats, and holds out his hand.
Sam lets go of the table, still staring at him, then takes one wobbly step forward, then another, and Gabriel feels a grin spread over his face. There's an unfamiliar warmth in his chest, and it increases as Sam stumbles toward him, an answering smile on his own small face. The kid has dimples even now, at ten months, and a few tiny little teeth that flash every time he smiles. It takes a moment for Gabriel to figure out just what that warm feeling is, and by then Sam has walked the whole six steps to get to him. So he scoops the boy up in his arms, congratulates him, and takes him off to the kitchen for an extra banana as a reward. He figures that eventually they can graduate to chocolate, but for now anything banana-related is the best bribe he can come up with.
Sam turns a year old without any fanfare. Gabriel eats the entire chocolate cake by himself ―cake isn't good for babies after all― and decides that this life really isn't so bad. Sam sits in his plastic high chair with turtle decals and beats an erratic tattoo against the white tray with his sippy cup, then looks up at Gabriel and grins like he's just invented music all on his own. Gabriel licks chocolate off his fingers, then motions at him with an index finger.
“Don't look so pleased with yourself. I once convinced an African tribe to drum for two consecutive nights in order to appease me because I was a vengeful god and was going to strike down all their cattle.” Sam makes a face and bangs his sippy cup a little more forcefully. “Yeah, okay, not especially nice, but I was impersonating an angry pagan god ―they're not meant to be nice.” Gabriel purses his lips when Sam bashes the sippy cup so hard against the tray that the lid nearly comes off and grabs it before there's an apple juice-related disaster all over the floor. “Okay, fine, you made your point. Not funny, Uncle Gabe.”
He grabs Sam under the armpits, hauls him into the air and swings him around until he kicks and shrieks with delight. When the kid is breathless and dizzy, he settles him on his hip.
“Happy birthday, Sammy.”
~*~
Sam's first word is 'Dean,' not that that comes as a surprise to Gabriel. He's a little surprised, maybe, because he's pretty sure that babies repeat sounds they hear on a daily basis, but then again, Sam isn't really a baby. He is a late talker, though, which is sort of surprising. The amount that kid talked as an adult, and from all reports when he was younger too, Gabriel figured he'd be talking non-stop by the time he was eight months. Instead, Sam is well over a year old when he utters his first word.
After that, though, it's as though someone opened the floodgates. The first cautious 'Dean?' is followed by new word after new word, and within about two months Sam is stringing the words together to form slightly broken sentences. He develops the habit of running up to Gabriel, grabbing his hand in both of his, and trying to drag him bodily to whatever new thing it is he's discovered that needs identifying, all urgency and big blue eyes.
“Where Dean?” he asks, the day he figures out how to formulate questions.
“Dean isn't here,” Gabriel replies, which doesn't answer the question at all, and the glare he gets from Sam tells him that the boy is wise to his slippery ways. He sighs. “I don't know where Dean is. You're just going to have to be patient, and maybe one day you'll see him again, okay?”
Sam sulks. Which Gabriel totally sympathizes with.
“Gabe, where Dean?”
The kid's persistent, Gabriel has to give him that. He blows out his cheeks, pinches the bridge of his nose as he tries to figure out just how to explain to this still-tiny soul that his brother is in a completely different place and time.
“Play with Dean, Gabe?”
“We can’t right now, sport. Dean can’t come to you right now, but maybe someday we can go to him, okay?”
“No! Want Dean!” Sam’s face turns red as it becomes obvious even to his still-developing mind that he’s not going to get what he wants, and within seconds he’s gone from quiet disappointment to ear-splitting rage.
“Holy… there are dogs that can’t hear you, bucko!” Gabriel tries to scoop up the wriggling, kicking bundle into his arms, but to no avail. Sam squirms and hits and even bites him once, all the while keeping up the same eardrum-shattering levels of shrieking. “Sam, calm down, for the love of –okay, poor choice of words.”
After ten minutes of this Gabriel gives up any pretence of control and just drops Sam back into his crib to wait for him to exhaust himself out of his tantrum. It takes a lot longer than he imagined it would –Sam’s been such a quiet kid that Gabriel kind of allowed himself to be lulled into a false sense of security. He leans in the doorway to the bedroom, arms folded over his chest, and listens as the screaming turns into desolate wailing, then into mournful, hiccupping sobs. It takes a while, but eventually all that’s left is the soft sound of Sam sniffling into his blankets, and Gabriel risks peeking over the side of the crib at the blotchy, tear-stained face.
“You done?” There’s no answer, so he pushes on. “Okay. You take a nap, sleep the rest of this off, and when you’re truly done, we’ll have dinner.”
“Want Dean.”
“Yeah, well, none of us ever get what we really want in life, bucko. That’s the absurd tragedy of it all.”
~*~
~*~
One morning the street outside turns red with blood. Gabriel stands on the stoop of the little white house and stares as the pavement liquefies before his eyes and runs dark and crimson. One by one the neighbouring houses –always a little indistinct unless he truly forced himself to look at them– begin to fade into the mist that’s always there. Sometimes the mist is so thin he can barely perceive it, and at other times it swirls thick and yellow, coating everything like a blanket and leaving behind a film of corruption, but it’s always there, whether or not he can see it.
The river of blood swells, overflowing its banks, and as it begins to lap at the doorstep Gabriel sees it begin to simmer and bubble. Something terrible seethes just beneath the surface, and while once upon a time he would have plunged a hand in to pull it out, now he pulls away from it, checking instinctively over his shoulder to make sure his charge is safe.
Sam is sitting on the living room carpet, playing with a set of Lego blocks, though whatever it is he’s making has no recognizable shape as yet. He looks up, perhaps sensing that something unusual is happening, but he says nothing, just stares at Gabriel, as though waiting for him to make it right again.
“Looks like we’re going to have to move, kiddo.”
He’s not surprised when their new home turns out to be a sparsely-furnished motel room. The older Sam gets, the clearer it has become to Gabriel that the world they live in is closely modelled after the one Sam lived in before. It seems only right that Sam should have somewhere familiar to grow up, even if the thought depresses Gabriel beyond words. He has found that, while he can alter the details of the place, the fundaments are beyond his ability to manipulate, fuelled directly by something inherent to Sam. Even if he could change them, he finds he is loath to indulge the idea. It’s not his place to change everything in Sam’s life, after all, nor to try to change who he’s meant to become, no matter the consequences. Gabriel has learned that lesson the hard way, he thinks, looking over at Sam, who has settled contentedly in the center of one of the twin beds, and is grinning at him, dimples out in full force.
“Stay with Daddy and Dean and Gabe,” he says, and Gabriel can only nod dumbly, at a loss for words.
~*~
Long before Sam turns even four years old, Gabriel has come to the conclusion that he’s not the only presence in the boy’s life, such as it is. He often catches Sam talking softly to someone else under his breath, sometimes giggling breathlessly at some joke Gabriel can’t hear. If Gabriel were human, and Sam a regular human child, he’d probably ascribe it to a vivid imagination –imaginary friends and the like. As it is, he checks very carefully to make sure there aren’t any evil forces currently at play in this tiny corner of Purgatory. It’s been safe enough so far, but Gabriel is no one’s fool. He knows what’s lurking in the mists, shrouded from sight, and eventually even this new home will have to be abandoned in favour of safer ground. He thinks he understands why ―Sam’s life has been a nomadic one, never staying in the same town for more than a few months at a time. Even if Gabriel's reasons for picking up and moving on aren't the same, the end result is.
Purgatory is the place monsters go when they die: his own presence here might well be a testament to that. Purgatory is not the purview of angels, and as a result he never gave the place any thought, indeed never even knew where it was. Only an angel could kill another angel, and their energy simply returned to God when they died. In certain cases, Gabriel heard of the worst of the fallen angels being banished to hell, to languish in eternal torment next to the Cage which held Lucifer prisoner, but those were just stories, never confirmed.
Sam is chattering away happily under his breath to someone Gabriel can’t see. He’s playing a rather elaborate-looking game involving two matchbox cars racing each other along the floor of the motel room, not even looking up when Gabriel lets himself fall gracelessly onto his bed and switches on the television. When Sam’s talking gets too loud to ignore, he turns to look at him.
“Who are you talking to, Sammy?”
He gets a flat look, as though he’s lost his mind. “Dean.”
“Dean isn’t here.” Gabriel doesn’t know why he feels compelled to say it.
Sam shrugs. “I can see him.”
“Can you?” Gabriel sits forward, intrigued in spite of himself. “What’s he like?”
That gets him a puzzled look. “I don’t know. He's like Dean.”
“Does he ever tell you to do things?”
“Yeah,” Sam is unconcerned, making one of the cars roll along a frayed piece of carpeting.
“Is it things you don’t want to do? Bad things?” God only knows what sort of nefarious creatures are lurking around, and Gabriel suddenly has the mental image of long-dead succubi creeping in the window at night to murmur terrible things in Sammy’s ear.
Sam scowls. “He’s bossy. I told him that I don’t have to do what he tells me this time, only what you tell me, but he doesn’t like that.” He looks up at Gabriel guilelessly. “He doesn’t like you much.”
Gabriel snorts. “I’ll bet he doesn’t.”
“Daddy says you’re not real.”
Gabriel feels a headache building behind his eyes, even though he knows it’s not real. It just figures, he thinks bitterly, that he has to compete for Sam’s attention with the living memories of John and Dean Winchester. Because his life just isn't hard enough.
~*~
~*~
“I know why we move all the time.”
Sam is sitting curled up in the center of a musty bedspread, knees drawn up to his chest. The bed is old, the posts made of brass, and it creaks and groans whenever anyone sits on it, or moves, or breathes too hard in its direction.
“You do?” Gabriel hasn’t exactly made a secret of it, but he’s never really bothered to explain what he’s doing. Sam’s a child, for all that he’s just the manifestation of his soul in this place, and he doesn’t feel the need to justify or explain himself at all to a boy who’s only beginning to learn how to do long division.
Sam reaches under his pillow, and pulls out a battered leather journal. “Dean says I shouldn’t have read this, because it’s Dad’s, but…”
Gabriel blinks. “Where did you get that?”
He gets a shrug in response. “I took it when Dad wasn’t looking. He thinks he keeps it hidden, but his hiding places aren’t that good. Are monsters real, Gabe?”
Gabriel comes to sit next to him. “What do you think, bucko?”
“Dad says they’re real, in his journal. Dad doesn’t lie.”
“Doesn’t he? If he told you monsters aren’t real all this time, and he says they are in his journal, that means one of those two things is a lie. Adults lie, Sam. It happens all the time.”
“So monsters are real.” Sam ducks his head, bangs falling in his eyes. “And Dad hunts them. Dean says he’s a superhero, like Batman. He helps people.”
Gabriel finds he doesn’t have much to say on the subject of John Winchester. He never came across him while he was alive, and he’s never had occasion to care about what he was like as a human being, or what his parenting skills were like. He’s a little miffed about John’s memory insisting that angels aren’t real and that Gabriel must therefore be a imaginary friend. He can just imagine John's irritable “And you’re too old for that kind of nonsense, Sammy!” But overall he doesn’t give the man more than a passing thought every so often.
“You could look at it that way.”
Abruptly Sam drops the journal into his lap, and curls up against Gabriel, leaning against his arm. “What if he dies like my mom?”
“He won’t.”
“How do you know? I mean, something got Mom, and that means something could get Dad, and if something gets Dad, then what’s going to happen to us?”
Gabriel has to think about how to answer that. “I know the way I know a lot of things you and your family don’t know. I know that your Dad isn’t going to die for many, many years, for one thing. So you don’t have to worry about that.”
“What if you’re wrong?”
He rolls his eyes. “I’m never wrong. But on the off-chance that I am, then I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. That’s what I’m here for, right?”
Sam looks up at him, eyes bright with unshed tears. “Do you promise?”
Gabriel figures he should be used to the unexpected surges of warmth he keeps feeling. They’ve been happening for years, now, and they surprise him every time. He sighs.
“Yeah, kiddo. I promise.”
~*~
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