paterelohim | for a_tricky

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for a_tricky_one

Who: God and Gabriel
When: Immediately after the events of "Hammer of the Gods"
What: Resurrection, and rare moments of active fatherhood.

With a snap and a twist, a Coyote falls dead. Anansi, the Raven, that old fool genius. The wingéd thing beyond time.

Death, it is said, is the only being older than the ever-powerful Almighty Himself. He and Death have sat down before, for the omnipotent immortal version of shooting the shit over beers, and after so much time the Horseman-who-is-so-much-more can't be said to remember whether he or the Alpha-Omega is older. There have been so many planets-galaxies-universes that the æons run together somewhat, and the original kernel of existence is but a mote in the unrelenting endlessness of time. If the Creator-that-may-not-be knows differently or can clearly recall who it was who first emerged to greet his other and equal, to begin that first of partnerships, He is not saying. Since beginningless time death has thrived in the voids and the darkness and the space between vibrant, thriving life, and God has long since forgotten how not to depend on that force which He considers to be His other half and perfect equal. By His own reckoning, He created Death, and Death will reap Him. So: nothing to remark upon. The trillions upon trillions upon countless, endless, nigh-meaningless deaths of His own worshipers and haters and the countless who never knew a kind of god have blurred into a dull throb that long since quieted to a constant, simmering, easily ignored presence. One more death, anywhere, of anything (no matter how large) is as a drop of water in the ocean.

Somewhere, Gabriel falls dead, and God takes notice.

There's a pause, a gasp, a record-scratch of time punctuated by a glass slipping from lax fingers and falling falling crash in a gorgeous Little Bang of shining glass and clear-as-crystal vodka. As a little bearded man drops His glass with a wholly ignored shatter a sheaf of papers falls from his hand, dropping neglected to the vodka spill and even a minute later, after clear alcohol has seeped into the pages and run the black ink beyond recognition He does nothing.

There's a sense of time to be understood here; a certain change of perspective part and parcel with omniscience. Time is a toy to be played with, a path to walk and cheat on and loop around, and sometimes to stop and sit in the dirt and play cards on. He is standing at a railing on the roof of a tower in a shining silver-steel-crystal city spun out into the sky where the atmosphere opens to the heaven, and Earth itself in this age is as limited as phones and radio and smoke signals once were in those sad little dark ages. It is the twilight of World War Ten and He is in the most beautiful city in the world since Pompeii; it's twenty minutes before the bars close on the eve of an election on a rainy autumn night in Bethlehem, and a baby is crying. At any moment there is Every moment, and is it a wonder that God stands to the side unmoving? To change one tiniest spark of action or thread of reality would cause a cataclysm of parental hovering and catastrophic I told you so and He can't. He was conscientiously objecting before the Quakers ever made it cool.

But in this moment a writer in Maryland stops and stares into cool nothingness, and feels a bright light go out like a physical pain that hits Him hard. Have you ever had an asthma attack? Have you ever been deprived of breath? Not just in the breathless, nervous-or-about-to-be-kissed sense; in the real, existentially terrifying sense of not knowing whether the next breath you take will be enough to keep you alive. It robs one of their feet, stability, their faith in their own body and their place in this universe, and this writer in Maryland feels that through to His bones and a deeper place that would drive most of us mad from the revelation.

Somewhere, Gabriel has died, and He has felt it. Once now He has felt and acted upon the death of an angelic child, but never- never did it feel like this, like the icy hand of death closing around his own lungs. Sometimes, interference is the only option.

He finds a thick, tangled, sticky rope of unreality and pulls.

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"But, Micheal and the others they-- they clung to your last words. Didn't care about anything but ending Lucifer. They wouldn't listen to me. I was scared..."

Tears were forming around his eyes.

"I know." And for all that He loved His son, loved him beyond any measure of human understanding, more than any mother who ever lifted a car off her child, His eyes stayed dry, even as He drew Gabriel into His arms, slipping an arm under the angel's shoulders to haul him into more of a sitting position. It hurt, to be sure; struck at the New Testament sensitive places that were such recent developments. He knew, but He could not apologize. Apologies implied regret, and that wasn't a place Chuck was willing to go. "I know. And I don't blame you for leaving."

There were so many things to say, and so many things He couldn't, so He kept it simple: straightforward answers and uncompromising beneficence. "You got it right, you know, in the end. I've never heard anyone sum it up so perfectly."

He sat there, in the arms of this Father, a place he'd never thought he'd be again. He'd never thought God would condone his actions, at least on some level. He hadn't said he'd approved of impersonating a pagan god, after all.

Gabriel shifted, so that he was sitting up more fully, but it was still painful. Everything hurt. But having Him there... it was a peace he hadn't felt in a long time, even if he couldn't really understand why He'd left-- of course, Gabriel had wound up doing much the same thing.

"I got it right?" The corners of Gabriel's mouth turned upward slightly, "Even the part about Lucifer being a 'great big bag of dicks'?"

Apparently, he was feeling better. Enough to joke, anyhow.

"Oh, definitely," He chuckled. "It's carved into the side of a mountain somewhere." Just for that, He put two fingers to Gabriel's forehead. Light flared blindingly from the point of contact as purifying Grace flooded the angel to replace what had been lost so violently. It should have wiped away the weakness, the pain, the sense of frailty in one simple motion. The light flared out and shone for only a second or two before going out just as suddenly.

"Come on." With that, Chuck started to stand up, supporting Gabriel's weight slightly. "Get up, you're okay." He stood back, still holding a steadying hand out. "You good? You're not gonna faint on me, are you?"

He stumbled to his feet, a little wobbly at first, like he'd never actually used the limbs under him before, which in actuality, was true.

"Faint? No. I think I might vomit though, if there were actually anything in my vessel's stomach to throw up." Gabriel looked around at the destruction, with a small frown, "Did I do that?"

The swathe of destruction Gabriel's resurrection had left was immense, and Chuck grimaced a little as He glanced around, letting Himself think about it for the first time in several minutes. "Yeah, uh, you basically did," He said, looking and acting more like the awkward prophet than the Almighty Father. "It's cool, though."

He smirked lightly and clapped His hands once. The earth beneath their feet trembled, branches of far-away trees shook and rustled, then swayed as a great wind rushed out in all directions, just barely outpacing narrow, intense beams of light arcing from the bubbling ground. Where the light raced followed the harshly beautiful sound of trumpets, and in a heartbeat they were standing outside of Chuck's house, in the middle of the perfectly restored town. Cars, houses, streetlights, and fire hydrants spread out all around, and the people; every single last casualty of the Archangel's rebirth, brought back from their brief deaths, snatched casually from the jaws of Hell and Heaven with no memory that anything strange had happened. If there was a joyous timbre to the dogs' barking or a certain sweetness in the ambient bird calls, nobody seemed to notice but the two beings on the faded green porch. Everything seemed somehow newer, too; every leaf unusually vibrant and once-neglected gardens thriving with the kind of new life, promises-kept raw Creation not felt since the dawn and making of the world.

It all happened in the space of five seconds. The Creator looked very pleased with Himself, and smirked at Gabriel with arms outstretched just a little, as if to brag- a uniquely Chuck reaction. "We can rebuild him. We have the technology."

Gabriel was in awe of the creation and power of his Father, that he hadn't even seen a fraction of in so terribly long. It's enough to make him want to cry, but he wants to maintain his composure. He was supposed to be tough, Loki- the Trickster, he wasn't supposed to care. Only he did care, of course. Especially, when it came to his family and most of all when it came to his Father.

Then Gabriel rolled his eyes and snorted at His comment, breaking the moment.

"I still can't believe you were Chuck... this whole time..."

He'd been right in the middle of it, having a small hand in the outcome.

He saw it, of course: that glimpse of awestruck wonder in the angel's eyes. He noticed it with a small amount of unsurprised relief that His son still remembered who he really was. Loki hadn't quite overtaken Gabriel.

"Yeah, well." He half-shrugged and started to rub the back of His neck awkwardly before catching Himself and pulling His arm down. "Nobody ever suspects a guy in his boxers."

Gabriel laughed, "No, I guess not."

Just like no one expected the trickster god of being an Archangel, but he doesn't say it. He doesn't want to have to try and explain himself. What is there to say, really? He'd done it and he hadn't been all that sorry about it. Gabriel wasn't even really sorry about it now.

"It's better than Groucho glasses."

Chuck's smile froze a little as He easily read Gabriel's thoughts and hesitation. The smile faded and He crossed His arms, gazing at the floor while trying to find the right words. When He did finally look up, His face was the picture of I'm not mad, just disappointed. "I know that you aren't sorry."

Like anyone with tell you, the 'I'm not mad, just disappointed' thing hurt far worse than if the person were just pissed as Hell at you. And having that look aimed at him by his Father... it made him quail just a bit. Gabriel frowned, averting his eyes. He was certainly sorry that he'd disappointed Him, at the very least.

"What do you expect me to say...?"

Cause, honestly, he didn't have a clue what he could say that would make it okay.

"I don't even know what there is to say," He began. "You don't kill for fun. You kill for mercy, or when there's no other choice. But you don't kill to make a point, as punishment, or because you think it's funny. Don't you remember Noah, Gabriel? Did my promise to these people mean nothing to you?"

He shut his eyes for moment, "I remember. But I also remember Sodom and Gomorrah. And what you made me do to the Nephilim before the flood. And your promise didn't mean nothing to me. Of course it didn't... I protect the ones that-the ones that deserve it. Maybe I started to enjoy hurting people that I felt needed a lesson... but I felt... right."

There's a twinge of 'you weren't there' in his voice. Gabriel had done what he wanted because he wasn't around to tell him what it was HE wanted.

His voice got just a little colder. It was so easy now to slip into old patterns: the stern Father berating wayward sons. He had little sympathy for anything that led to one of His children acting like a pagan. "And what makes you think that what you've been doing is anything like that? You were set on the Nephilim because I gave you an order. But- No. You don't act like that, Gabriel. You don't turn into a sadist just because I'm not around. For g- fuck's sake, you attracted hunters. Twice!"

He wants to yell at Him, but he can't. He can't even raise his voice to his Father. But he was mad, all the same.

"I attracted Sam and Dean on purpose."

He was conveniently ignoring the bit about him being a sadist.

"The first time? Or at the Mystery Spot?" Now there was a shining example of angelic behavior. "Or everything you did as Loki?"

He sighed, and settled back on His heels a bit. Chuck couldn't be too completely wrathful, but couldn't bring Himself to forgiveness just yet, either. "I know I wasn't there, and that you were confused, and while I don't blame you for leaving I do blame you for the way you acted."

"The first time." Gabriel wasn't looking at his Father as he spoke, his tone bitter, "Why'd you bring me back? To tell me how you blamed me for being an asshole?"

"Because I love you, jackass." He winced. That came out a little harsher than He'd intended. "I wasn't gonna let you die. You got it right, you were one of the only ones who did- how could I let you die?"

Gabriel ran a hand through his hair, giving him a side-long glance, "You let plenty of other Angels die..."

He turned away, unwilling or unable to look Gabriel in the eye. "It was too bad, but every war has casualties. I don't interfere any more unless I have to."

Sam and Dean on that plane. Castiel's resurrection: these were the things He raised a hand for.

"Unless you have to? Not that I don't appreciate being alive and all... but why did I have to be back?" he turned to look at him fully, now.

Chuck just stood there, mouth tightening into a thin line, not speaking. Because He had no good answer and no reason. Gabriel didn't have to be back at all- God just gave more of a damn about him.

Gabriel watched him with a small frown, then he looked away.

He thought maybe he understood. God was more attached to him and the other Archangels than he was to the rest. That should make him feel good and perhaps it might have if he were more like Lucifer, but he wasn't really.

He cared about the deaths of his brothers and sisters, and He hadn't brought back them. But He'd brought back Gabriel. It almost made him feel guilty, for what had he done that was so deserving? Finally stood up for something one time in the past several thousand years?

The porch swing creaked a little when He sat down on it. There had to be something. He had to break this silence.

"At least you know that I care."

"Yeah... thanks." Gabriel said, lamely, while looking at the ground below his feet.

"So, what now?"

Because Gabriel certainly wasn't going back to Heaven and let's face it, he'd probably just revert back to old habits.

"Now?" He said softly. "Now, I wipe your memory and you wake up at the bottom of a crater somewhere east of the Tigris and west of the Euphrates."

In Eden.

"Yeah, you wouldn't want me to remember this and start spreading it around that you really are a 'slob like one of us'." Gabriel sighed through his nose.

"Hey, I'm sorry it has to be this way." Almost. He stands up and approaches Gabriel again, looking something approaching sad. "If it helps, I promise you won't be in the dark forever."

"I don't know that it does." Gabriel answered truthfully, because what was the point of pretending any different? He already knew was Gabe was thinking.

Gabriel wished He'd just come back. Tell them what it was that He wanted. To just fucking be there. Cause then, Hell, maybe Gabe might return to Heaven too. He loved Him. And having Him gone was like having this great big gaping hole in his chest that could never be filled. Having Him here now, and knowing he was just leaving again... it pained him almost more than have Lucifer run him through with his own blade.

Chuck winced very slightly at that, because it really was true. Here He was, being the deadbeat Father again, but. But He had to; there was a plan at work here. He steeled Himself mentally, but it wasn't enough to keep the wistfulness and real concern out of His eyes. He did, after all, love His kids.

"It'll feel different this time," He said quietly. "When people say 'I'll be watching over you,' and the person hearing it thinks it's total crap? Well, they're right, but. I will be, and you'll feel it, subconsciously. You won't be alone." You've earned that.

He was of two minds about it. Yes, Gabriel wanted Him around. Feeling Him watching over him, would be a comfort.

But at the same time, knowing for a fact that his Father was watching as he tricked people... it would be almost worse than when a teenager is caught masturbating by their parents.

But, no he wanted to feel Him. He wanted to know He was around. More than he really still wanted to be Loki.

Gabriel turned to look at him, his eyes a lot softer and reminiscent of the times before time, when he was younger and more shining example of a messenger of God, "Thank you, Father."

Chuck returned that smile, but it was a little forced. He may have overstated the extent to which His presence would be felt just a little. It wouldn't be a conscious knowledge, or a real certainty that God was with him- just a subconscious, vague feeling of not being quite so empty. Any more than that would take away Gabriel's choice, and contrary to popular belief He DID value the free will of the angels. His son would still be free to be Loki or Gabriel at his discretion, but perhaps with a little stronger feeling of safety in those moments when he was alone.

He leaned in to draw Gabriel in for a good, solid man-hug. "I'll see you later, Gabriel." And when they pulled away and His hand clapped Gabriel's shoulder, there was a soft rushing sound- and he was gone.

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