Gabriel loved the stars. When he had lived in Heaven, he'd go out almost every night just to listen to the star songs and watch them light up the universe. He could still hear them singing from his vantage point on Earth, but he had to admit that he missed the feeling of warmth that washed over him when he got close to a star.
Some nights, he'd fly to the most remote place he could find and watch the stars shimmer and twinkle up in space. If he really wanted to, he could have flown up and danced with them like he used to, but that would have alerted everyone up in Heaven that he was still alive and he wasn't ready for that yet.
From what Castiel had told him, Heaven was in total anarchy. He couldn't believe that the angels were fighting amongst each other. When he had left all those centuries ago, Heaven had still been run by God and the archangels and was a joyous place filled with laughter and music. He hated to think that his home was in such trouble and knew that one day soon he'd have to go back and reclaim control of Heaven.
The thought saddened him immensely. He was the youngest archangel, and as such, had never been expected to rule anything. Back in Heaven, before God had created the Earth, he and his brothers had spent their days playing together, singing songs of their Father and flying through the universe God had created.
Then he had created Earth and the archangels had a new place to explore. When he had first created Man and the angels to protect and guide them, Gabriel had been ecstatic. Lucifer hadn't been so pleased. It was the start of the fight that would eventually lead to the Apocalypse. Gabriel still remembered that the four oldest angels had all had specific jobs to do.
Michael and Lucifer had ruled Heaven by relaying God's instructions to the angels. Raphael and Gabriel had been in charge of training and creating the Garrisons. Gabriel had never ruled anything other than his own destiny, but he knew that with Raphael dead and Michael and Lucifer in the Cage, he was the only one left with the power to bring order to Heaven.
He hated it, being the most powerful thing in the world. He hated the fact that his brothers were all dead in every way that mattered, that his father didn't care enough about his creations to rule them, that the sole responsibility of ruling Heaven, the angels and essentially Earth fell to him.
It was a lot of responsibility, and even God hadn't been able to do it all on his own. But here was Gabriel, an angel who hadn't been home in centuries, trying to take on the weight of the world, literally.
He'd have to tread carefully when the time came for him to claim the throne. Most of the angels would be furious that he had abandoned them and ignored them all those years, some would be furious that he had come back to take away the meager amount of power that they had amassed, and a select few could be too relieved to finally have a ruler again to care.
Some would most definitely try to punish him for abandoning them, but he hoped that he could take over without having to kill any of his younger brothers or sisters. He hated causing pain to those he loved, and even though he didn't know all of the angels in Heaven personally, he loved them anyway. Because that was just how angels were designed, they were beings of pure love and compassion, and Gabriel couldn't fathom why some of them would do the things that they had done.
So, sitting outside a crappy motel on the roof of Dean's precious car, he allowed himself a moment of weakness and he mourned.
He mourned for all the angels who had died in the civil war against Raphael, he mourned for the three other archangels who had just been doing what they had believed was right, he mourned for the sadness his younger siblings would feel once he told them God had abandoned them, he mourned for the pain that he would feel when he fought his way into Heaven, for the weight he would have to take on that he feared would crush him, for the archangel he would have to become in order to rule Heaven and the archangel he'd have to kill in order to become that ruler.
He felt tears well in his eyes, but he blinked them away. There would come a time when he would let himself cry. Right before he reclaimed the kingdom of his father as his own, right after the deaths of two hunters and one Fallen angel, he'd let himself cry in peace. He'd let himself cry for all the millennia of pain he'd gone through.
So for now he just sat there, staring at the few stars he could see, listening to their sweet song. He watched their light grow fainter and fainter as the sun rose. He closed his eyes and let the warmth wash over his face, and if he focused hard enough on the feeling of heat rushing over his skin, he could pretend that it was the warmth of the love of God, a warmth he hadn't felt in thousands of years and would probably never feel again.
"Hey, Gabe, what are you doing out here so early?"
Gabriel looked down and saw Sam and Castiel walking out of the motel room with bags in their hands. He glanced up and saw that the sun was high in the sky. He took a deep breath and let it out slow, releasing all of his worries and insecurities along with it. He slapped his usual smirk on his face and turned back to the two waiting for his answer.
"I wanted to paint Dean-o's car hot pink, but I got a little distracted when I had to toss a mugger into a wormhole."
A complete lie, but luckily, he was the best liar in the world. Neither Sam nor Cas could tell that underneath his smug words lay hurt so deep that his very Grace had started to writhe in pain from it.
And he didn't know whether he was glad or not that they couldn't tell.