And Behold; Darkness was his Candle.
Gabriel flinched awake. Disorientating, dark nothingness greeted him. His surroundings were both familiar and alien simultaneously. He recalled the dark cocoon like depths he inhabited with his twin, even as he struggled to get his bearings in the bleakness.
Where on Earth was he? Why was he on the floo... Michael! The thought came to him a second before the audible evidence of his brothers proximity. Gabriel gasped as he raising a hand protectively to his chest as he registered Michael's agonised cry. It was full throated pain and knowing his insanely proud, idiotic little brother, to draw that sound someone was doing something they would die messily for, to him. Just as soon as he figured out what in Heaven's name was going on?!
Springing gracefully to his feet, his angel eyes adjusting to the gloom, he began to make out scents of dampness and moss. They were underground. Taking in what he could of the room he found there was only one exit and it was not moving. Not even when he applied the full force of his mighty Archangel wings, did the barrier budge.
Michael screamed out again and Gabriel howled in frustration slamming at the door wildly. He had to get to him. Michael needed him and he needed to end whoever it was that dared to lay hands on his twin. He would smite them in such a way as to cause The Flood to appear a mere trickle in comparsion. Ironically his brother had been The Flood. But it was clear Michael was not in a position to act in his own defence. Gabriel had to think. Time was, for once, was not a commodity he had in abundance. From the sheer anguish in Michael's voice, time appeared on even less friendly terms with his sibling.
He began to feel the limits of the cell like enclosure, taking in as much information as he could from his heightened angelic senses. There was air in the room, so it was not airtight. Perhaps there was some concealed air duct that he could use to his advantage?
Even as the Archangel sought a means of escape, the only verified exit opened suddenly. A bundle of crumpled dark clothes and obsidian black wings were tossed unceremoniously into the cell.
"Michael." he gasped in surprise, ignoring the doorway out as it slammed ominously.
He was on his knees in a heartbeat attempting to turn his unresponsive brother. This was no mean feat for although Michael appeared more lean in frame, his brother knew from experience that he had been made for a purpose. Michael's form was all dense muscle that equipped Heaven's Sword to destroy all who stood before him.
Except maybe today. Gabriel thought bitterly to himself as he hauled the limp form over on to his back only to extract a cry of pain and quickly let him move to whichever position caused him the least misery.
"Nope, today, Heaven's Sword got his ass kicked." Gabriel surmised aloud even as he began battle triage on autopilot.
He was used to seeing his sibling take injuries – but he had never heard him howl like that. Then he saw it. The disjointed left wing, crumpled at an odd angle. He swore violently to himself.
From his position on his side, Michael supplied a weak; "That's exactly what I thought!"
"Brother." Gabriel's voice was laced with concern and tears.
The injury was serious. In the past, the unfortunates who had suffered this torment could only be completely healed by Father.
"Help me up Gabriel." Michael asked in a faint tone that indicated the majority of his efforts were being channelled into staying conscious.
Gabriel grasped his out stretched hand like it was the rock of ages and applied the gentlest of pressure to swivel Michael's position, allowing him to sit upright. Even this elicited a hiss of undisguised agony. Gabriel's anger burned volcanically but for once it was not directed at his twin. Assessing the wounds littering the rest of his body, obviously made with Imperian steel, he resolved to deal with the most important thing first; Michael.
Locking eyes with his brother's pained sky blue orbs, he attempted to distract him while he worked.
"Is it true, Vega's Town Charter has a section on Archangel Etiquette?"
Michael's face became guarded and evasive but Gabriel could tell he had picked well.
"I did help them build the town! They felt the need to show their appreciation." A slightly defensive note began to creep into his perfectly poised tone.
"Oh, do not mistake me brother! I'd want a definite five metre perimeter round me – you were reasonable in asking for... What was that?" Gabriel made a show of concentrating. "No- non military or Council personnel to initiate interactions! You worded that ... right?! The elder twin smirked.
"They'd fall to their knees and try to pray to me! It was ... uncomfortable."
Gabriel chuckled as he tied off a make shift bandage from his tunic around the most serious gash. Immediately it started to slow the blood flow. He licked his lips as he glanced at the badly broken wing. They were truly an Angels Achilles heel. It was a damn near impossible injury to cause and the brutality of it shocked him and utterly explained Michael's screams.
"Machines." His brother exhaled tiredly, head down pretending not to notice the other beings horrified expression.
"They used some kind of metallic contraption that bent it up and..."
Gabriel laid a comforting, firm hand on the back of his twin's neck, drawing Michael's attention.
"We will right this Michael. We will get out and we will deliver such Wrath upon them, it will spawn a new book of the Bible! My word on that."
"Careful Archangel; that is sacrilegious!" a melodic voice interrupted from a far corner.
Gabriel turned to their unguarded flank with lightening speed. He must be losing his touch or going insane! He had been alone in this cell before his brother's entrance!
The figure stayed in the corner, devoid of any trace of light; even outdoing an Archangel's focus. Michael too became more alert at the smell of the new threat, snapping to with a grunt of determination and pain. Only Gabriel was close enough to see the tremors that coursed through his body, indicating the price of appearing to be battle ready.
Insufferable Idiot! He thought dryly as he moved very subtlety in front of his brother making himself the first line of defence, not the battered and bloody General of the Angelic Hosts. He had once joked with Father that, that title alone was enough to make flying a harder task for Michael. Gabriel practically heard his twins eyes roll heavenward behind him.
"Oh at ease Dastardly and Muttely!" the irritated sounding voice in the corner tutted.
Michael frowned heavily. That voice, so familiar? He tried to force the screaming pain in his wings and chest to shut the hell up, so he could concentrate! It almost sounded like...
The figure in the corner chuckled but stayed to the shadows.
"Whoever you are." Gabriel rolled into his usual bored drawl attempting to even the playing field. "You obviously spend too much time round the humans. I gather the names you are throwing at us like rocks and, or twigs, are intended to offend? We do not hurt that easily friend."
"Gabriel" Michael breathes in a tone that almost had the Archangel turning.
Gabriel forced himself to momentarily ignore his brother – he could not concede the frontline. If this creature attacked, despite his posturing, Michael was in no shape to stand, let alone fight.
"Gabriel!" Michael called more urgently. "It smells like..."
The man stepped from the shadows. Blonde and muscular, shorter than Michael with a permanent nine o'clock shadow and a cocky grin on his handsome rugged face. Dressed like a solider of Vega's Archangel Corps, he carried an air about him that went beyond confidence. It showed most clearly in his glacier coloured eyes which remained hard as diamonds despite the broad smile on his face.
"I don't know Gabriel – Michael looks plenty hurt to me! Maybe not enough? But it's a solid start."
"Morning Star!" Michael spat.
"That's right Muttely! Looks like the Chosen One – smells like Heaven on Earth."
"You reek of Damnation Lucifer." Gabriel's voice remained uncharacteristically flat.
He struggled hard to pull his mind together from the pieces it had scattered into. His eldest brother, Father's favourite, had survived? But Gabriel himself had witnessed the epic battle between the Armies of Heaven and Lucifer's band of rebels. It ragged like fire and ice, lighting hellfire across the heavens; scaring both mankind and himself. Men feared for their own survival amidst the catastrophic weather. Gabriel feared for his twin's life because that was the stakes when you took on Lucifer. Michael had taken up their Father's commission and the twin blades he had gifted him and sought to deliver God's Justice to an impossible foe.
"Oh Boys. I had hopped you would have grown a little more in stature in my absence. After all, the bar was considerably less elevated. And yet you stand there as if struck dumb?" Lucifer taunted.
Michael recovered first. His anger a snapping animal clawing in his chest. How could Lucifer have survived being cast down?
"We have no need for competition amongst ourselves, Morning Star. We are content to carry out Father's perfect will."
"By Father Muttely! I did name you well – Heaven's faithful lapdog. Ever ready to carry out every whim the Old Man had – brainlessly obedient."
"Whilst you brother, were struck down by our Father, to be lower than the true Dogs of Heaven. Is it co-incidence, the humans associate you with a goat, I wonder?" Gabriel mused out loud.
"You are good Dastardly." Lucifer praised. "But you are not – me. My eye cannot be drawn away from my quarry so easily and by so obvious a bait. I will get to you, my cartoon villain. Patience." The fallen Angel wearing Alex Lannon's face purred. Turning his head to the side, his gaze locked on the crumpled form hunched on the floor. "I am not done congratulating Heaven's little solider on his momentous, albeit, lucky, win."
"The victory was our Father's, Lucifer, not mine." Michael answered in an admonishing tone. "Maybe, if you had grasped that – you would not have lost?"
"Ooh General!" Lucifer chortled. "Your time with the humans has made you sassy!"
Michael said nothing, but communicated his displeasure through his raised eyebrow and flat look. This only pushed the devil shaped like Alex to laugh gleefully as he carried on.
"Of course, there was that little homicidal period of adjustment – right Michael? The Flood they called you? Gabriel was always a little too generous with his praise!"
Gabriel watched his brother's resolve falter a little at the mention of his most shameful actions. He silently willed his twin to buck up. One did not show a chink in their armour to the Morning Star; not unless they wanted him to scoop out their body and soul through it!
"Why so modest General? " Lucifer pushed. "You took on the role of God's Wrath. His righteous vengeance against the innocent women and the children, the babe in arm and the old crone too feeble to move her own limbs to crawl away from the oncoming tide of blood and death. That was beautiful!"
"It was an abomination." Michael stated flatly. "I failed... I was ..."
"Weak?" Lucifer suggested matter of factly. "You see, you believe you went too far, before the monumental ass kicking Uriel and your own twin stopped you with." Turning his head to Gabriel, the fallen Angel threw him a conspiratorial wink and thumbs up. "Inspired work by the way, Dastardly; I verged on sending you a fruit basket." Centring his attention back on a squirming Michael, he continued with a malicious gleam in his eye. "I believe you did not go far enough. Your impotence was against Father's will – your work was not done – you blunt tool!"
"I was wrong." Michael admitted in a low pained tone, his emotions causing his voice to crack.
It was all Gabriel was prepared to allow. Stepping more solidly in front of his wounded twin, he looked his eldest sibling squarely in the eye.
"Michael still occupied Heaven, even after that Lucifer. He was not thrown down and discarded like a thing gone wrong. That would have been his fate, had he erred as seriously as you. His mistake was in his eagerness to serve. Your self serving eagerness, made Father see that you were one big mistake."
Anger flashed briefly across Lannon's borrowed features and when he spoke the edge to his voice should have drawn blood.
"So, God's Mouthpiece – just dying to have our say are we? Tell me little brother, as you have decided to champion the failure at your back – why have you spent the last twenty five years trying to kill him?"
"Not him, the humans, the betrayers of our Father's trust. You know – your peers!"
From behind him he heard Michael let out a genuine laugh.
Lucifer's eyes went red. This could mean nothing good for either of them before he screamed causing both Michael and Gabriel to cover their ears.
"How dare you equate divine perfection with that mongrel race of Adam's bastards?! How dare you presume to know the relationship Father and I had before you and your wretched twin and all our mewling brothers and sisters invaded?! I was the first! There was only me and Father. He delighted in Me! He named me for the strongest force in the Heavens!"
As Lucifer raged on Gabriel registered Michael's anguished cries above his own. His twin's bandages were soaked in blood from where he had doubled over and tears seeped from his eyes amidst the contorted mask of suffering he wore. Gabriel reached out an unsteady hand to Michael even as he tried to lay his uncovered ear against his own shoulder.
Abruptly the cacophony of noise and pain stopped. Gabriel dared to turn and face the damned former Archangel. Still wearing Alex's image, presumably to further punish Michael, Lucifer studied them with cold, calculating eyes.
"I should have recalled." The devil mused in his normal voice. "It's the whole twin thing right?" Flicking a glance at Michael, Lucifer all but purred like a cat. "The only way to truly hurt you two is to ..."
Michael jerked suddenly under his eldest sibling's frigid stare. His back arched unnaturally, a howl emitted from the depths of his being as his body was pushed beyond his endurance. His breath came harshly, in laboured pulls mingled with broken whimpering noises.
"Stop!" Gabriel shouted unashamedly begging. "Lucifer, stop please? Don't! You'll kill him!"
The Morning Star laughed as he somehow still caused Michael to bend further straining his spine, which protested loudly with the rumble of bones and the archangel's incoherent screams.
"I am doing you a favour brother. I am giving you a taste of things to come. Even with the darkness of the Amphora fortifying your veins, you still lack the conviction to destroy Michael. But in truth, all you need do is ... Let it happen!"
There was a snap and then a terrifying silence that is utterly shattering in its finality. Gabriel throws himself to the ground scooping up his broken twin, crying in a wailing noise that fills the air and almost succeeds in blotting out his elder sibling's final barb. He clenches the rapidly cooling body to himself, willing his own heat into it with every fibre of his being. As he rocks, he sobs uncontrollably, whispering Michael's name with the infinite sorrow and utter reverence you would use to invoke a martyr.
Lucifer looks on as he states just loudly enough to be heard over Gabriel's breaking heart.
"Why do you think I wore the Chosen One's face? He is the best weapon there is. And he only grows stronger."
Gabriel gasps awake. Sucking too much air in, he instantly chokes, jack knifing into an upright position. This time the sun is blazing on high and he catches the smell of destruction. Glancing across the desert expanse, he smells Vega burn under the dense cloud the Amphora of Darkness has released. Sluggishly he realises that he has passed out after delivering the weapon on his target of choice, with devastating effect- from the sounds he could discern.
Michael was out there. In that. The pulse of regret or guilt he expected to feel, never came, instead he felt empty. That spot that had been home to the bond with his twin appeared to have been sterilised by the darkness. Gabriel felt neither regret nor rejoicing at its loss; only a numbness that settled into his soul. Michael was where he had chosen to be. The former Sword of Heaven had placed himself in Gabriel's path. Deliberately he had sided with the scum of the earth, over his own flesh and blood. Michael was a traitor.
An unbidden image of a young boy with luxuriant black curls and soulful deep brown eyes rose in his mind causing him to swallow reflexively and tighten his grip on his sword. Perhaps Michael had always been a traitor?