He'd heard it was going to happen. Known about it for a while, thanks to the few connections he still had with the Mothership.
Not that he cared, particularly. He'd packed in his halo and hung up his wings, and had no intention of being anything other than AWOL for the foreseeable future.
So yeah, he'd heard the news. Cain and Abel to the power of twenty billion or wherever they were now, walking the Earth and supposedly being watched so they can grow up big, strong and ready to kill each other.
Not that he was getting involved.
No, thank you. He'd much rather go where he was naturally inclined to go; namely, wherever self-righteous douchebags needed to be taken down a peg or two.
This was the reasoning that led to Gabriel schmoozing his way into the latest in a stream of delightfully crappy jobs. It was a brilliant scheme, if he said so himself. Turn up, get job in douchebag-saturated area, hang around long enough to get a good harvest (hey, he was immortal, he had plenty of time to wait), move on once bored. This time, it was serving pizza and handing out arcade prizes at the Northern Ohio branch of "Plucky Penny-Whistle's Magical Menagerie". Snot-nosed kids, boo. Bullies to pick on, yay. Weary single moms who love a guy who loves kids, can I get an amen?
All in all, it was a pretty sweet gig, for one as jubilant in the Earthly pleasures as Gabriel.
Until trouble came looking for him.
He'd recognised them the moment they came through the door, one the old-before-his-time guardian, the other the rebellious youth. They had an aura around them that spoke of generations of loyalty, righteousness, love and heartbreak. Even if they had no idea who, or what, he was, Gabriel sure was pissed that the young hunters had found him.
The Michael Sword couldn't have been more than twelve, but he looked every bit the grown-up as he marched his brother in and sat him down at one of the chunky plastic tables. Large canvas bag over one shoulder, the kids pointed a finger in his younger brother's pouting face.
"I'm serious, Sam, don't move, ok? You even try to leave this restaurant and I'll kick your butt so hard…"
"Ok, Dean, jeez." Sam scowled at the table top. "Can I at least have some money for pizza, or games or something?"
Dean, the young warrior, handed the younger kid a five dollar bill and hitched his bag up his shoulder again.
"I'll be back in, like, a half hour. Promise."
"Why can't I come with you?"
"I told you… It's big boy stuff. You'd be bored."
"I'm gonna be bored here." Sam scowled, but didn't leave his seat. Dean sent him one last warning look, before heading for the doors. As he walked past Gabriel, the angel-turned-trickster saw him double-take.
"You… uh… I'm coming back for him."
"I'm sure you are." Gabriel raised an eyebrow. Dean shifted his weight uneasily, before looking Gabriel up and down.
"Can you make sure he doesn't leave?"
"Yeah," Gabriel said, with a sigh. Figures he'd run away from Heaven and still end up watching over chosen ones.
"Cool." He still seemed reluctant to go, giving Gabriel another wary look. "Christo."
"Say what?" Gabriel blinked politely. Dean smiled, apparently more relaxed after his little demon test.
"That's uh… His name. But everyone calls him Sam."
And with that, the little hellion left. Gabriel straightened his multicoloured Plucky's Pal waistcoat and dutifully stomped over to the kid's table.
"Welcome to Plucky Pennywhistle's Magic… You been here before?"
"What?"The kid looked up at him. Small, physically, but Gabriel of all people knew that meant nothing. The kid had a future of strength in line, he could tell.
"Have you ever been to a Plucky's before?"
"No."
"Great, I get to do the whole speech…" Gabriel rolled his eyes, cleared his throat, and plastered on a fake smile the size of Canada. "Hey there, Pal, and welcome to Plucky Pennywhistle's Magical Menagerie, where fear disappears and your dreams are good. We have fun, games and just a little magic in the air, so pull up a chair, grab a plate and remember, you can't function without fun."
Gabriel sighed, and noted Sam's wrinkled nose.
"Hey, I didn't write it, they just make me say it. You want anything to eat?"
"No." Sam sat back on his plastic chair and scowled at the table top some more. Gabriel sighed, rooted in his pocket and produced a crumpled five-dollar bill.
"I'll pay. I have a feeling if your brother comes back and I've just let you sit there and sulk, I'll lose my vest."
Sam squinted at Gabriel for a moment, as if deliberating whether or not he could trust him. Gabriel tutted; such suspicious children. Yes, he was powerful enough to wipe out the tri-state area with a thought, but they had no reason to suspect that.
"Can I get ice cream?"
"It's Sundae Sunday." Gabriel grinned. "You can get two for the price of one."
"Do they have sprinkles?"
"Three. Different. Kinds."
The smile that lit up the little weed's features told Gabriel he was very good at his cover job. And, when he was stood doing his shift on the prize booth an hour later, watching the chubby-faced, scruffy-haired Sam, face smeared with fudge sauce and starting to make friends in the play zone, Gabriel knew he'd done a good thing.
He couldn't tell the future, not as such, but he had premonitions. He could feel the way his Father's will would work, especially on certain individuals. And he could tell that the world had a lot of hurt in store for Sam. He could tell that this might be the last chance the kid had to just be a happy, ignorant kid. So maybe he'd done a good thing.
That was when Bongo turned up. Charles "Bongo" Madison, resident clown of the Northern Ohio Plucky's, had been on Gabriel's radar for some time. Hypocritical, two-faced, rude, lecherous, he was many of these things. Not around the kids, of course, that was how he kept his job. Gabriel knew he also gambled, cheated on his tax, and, most importantly, wasn't above beating his wife or kids.
Yes, he'd been placed quite firmly on top of Gabriel's list. As of yet, the Trickster Temp was just trying to figure out the best way to get him.
"I'm going for a break. Don't let any of the SOBs come find me, 'kay?"
"You want to cut back on those 'breaks'." Gabriel smiled, sarcastically. "They'll be the death of you."
"Fuck you."
And he was charming, to boot. Gabriel watched "Bongo" leave, before his attention was called back to his current work duty; handing out rainbow slinkys and cheap stuffed unicorns. Thus, it was a good ten minutes before he turned his eyes over the play zone and realised that Sundae Sam had split.
Hmm.
He wasn't worried. He wasn't a baby-sitter. He was... he was, apparently, already on his way to look for Sam.
(-*-)
Sam was aware that Dean had wanted him to stay inside the building. Sam had decided not to care. He wasn't a baby. He could go wherever he wanted, and Dean wasn't there to stop him.
Besides, it wasn't like he was actively ignoring Dean's orders. At first, he'd decided it might even be fun, finally getting to play with some kids his own age.
That was before he was laughed out of the play zone by those same kids pointing out that his clothes looked old and horrible, and that he was weird because he didn't go to school with them.
Like Sam enjoyed moving around pretty much every month.
He was fed up of sitting there listening to them laughing at him. Well, not all of them. One girl, called Janie, had been friendly enough. But he was getting fed up of the mean kids all the same, so he decided to take a wander.
He had found his way to a fire exit, seemingly free of Plucky Pal supervision, and slipped out into the back lot behind the building. He was feeling kinda lonely. And sad.
That was when he'd spotted the broad, shiny, multicoloured suit of the clown that he'd spotted earlier. Clowns were supposed to cheer you up, right? Sam supposed he'd go and talk to the clown.
(-*-)
Gabriel was an archangel. An all powerful, right-hand-of-God, force-to-be-reckoned-with, archangel of the Lord in the most Old School way possible, and here he was slowly but surely losing his marbles.
"Jeanie, kid!" He ran up to the red-haired regular, whose parents (also on Gabriel's list) treated the restaurant like a day-care. "You see the new boy?"
"Sam? He was nice." She beamed up at him.
"Yeah, real nice, total peach, where'd he go?"
"D'no." Jeanie shrugged, returning to her colouring. "The other kids were being kinda mean, I think he went outside. To find his brother or something."
Gabriel cursed himself, his surroundings… generally everything he could.
"Wanna see my rainbow?"
"Is it anything like the other twenty five you drew for me?"
"What?"
"Nothing, Jeanie… Did you see where Sam went?"
"Out the fire 'scape." Jeanie said, resting her crayons on the table. "Said he had to avoid the Plucky's Pal his brother paid off. Uncle G?"
"Yeah?"
"What's a 'moron'?"
"It's… I don't know, but I'm starting to think I might be one. I'll see you later, Jeanie."
Gabriel had a very, very bad feeling. He managed to restrain from vaulting the tables and bodily throwing small children from his path, but somehow he just knew young Sam would get himself into trouble. And it wasn't until he was through the fire escape and searching with ever-growing fervour that he began to gain an understanding of exactly how much trouble a small child could find.
Sam was walking up to "Bongo", hand outstretched, hoping to tug on the clown's sleeve and have a dedicated, trusted children's entertainer cheer him up.
Shit.
Gabriel had never followed Bongo out here on one of his "breaks", but he had a few ideas. They included, but weren't limited to:
Drugs,
Booze,
Hookers,
Drugs (the seriously bad kind),
Radio phone-in competitions,
And masturbation.
As prepared as he was to avert young Samuel's eyes from any variants on the above, he was definitely not prepared for what he actually saw.
As Sam's tiny hand yanked on the clown's shirt, Charles (or, Gabriel supposed, the thing that had previously claimed to be Charles "Bongo" Madison) turned around and revealed something horrific. His face, twisted and contorted to house long, fang-like teeth, was made all the more inhuman by the blotchy, smudged face-paint that covered his pudgy, balding head. Well, that wasn't strictly true. His mouth, a gaping hole filled with the afore-mentioned dangerously sharp teeth, was painted with blood and draped with chunks of flesh.
He clutched in his hand what looked very like a human arm, complete with (this made Gabriel cringe in a way he hadn't done for several centuries) tattoos.
Charles "Bongo" Madison was a ghoul.
Gabriel hadn't been paying close enough attention.
Sam was shitting himself.
The kid stumbled backwards and screamed his lungs out, eyes wide and horrified as the gargantuan ghoul clown descended on him.
Gabriel, feeling his wings rustle with indignance, leapt further and faster than any human should have been able to, grabbing Sam and pulling the kid to his feet.
"Run, Sam!"
Sam didn't have the presence of thought, apparently, to run and scream at the same time, so he opted for screaming.
Gabriel gave him credit, the kid knew to stick to what he was good at.
"Guess I'll have to get rid of you, too," the ghoul snarled, eyeing Gabriel with an attitude that said he was glad he'd be getting a three course meal today.
"I don't think so." Gabriel scowled, before throwing out his arms and feeling his long dormant wings tear through the pockets of subreality they had been folded away in for centuries. They glowed bright, and before the hapless ghoul could comprehend what had happened, he was on the end of a bright-as-the-sun smiting, and withered away into shadows and dust.
Gabriel turned to watch the terrified form of Sam, silently crying as he stared up at the clown-killer.
How the ever-loving shit was Gabriel going to explain this without blowing his cover?
(-*-)
When Dean finally returned from dropping off the extra stuff his Dad needed to hunt down a nest of vampires, he found himself having to pry his younger brother away from his knees.
"The hell, Sammy, Get offa me…"
"Dean I don't like clowns. Dean, take me back to the motel now, Dean…"
Gabriel watched, feeling ashamed of himself. He honestly wasn't sure whether wiping the kid's memory was a good move or not. On the one hand, clown-phobia was a lot easier for everyone to deal with than the knowledge that he had been nearly eaten by a ghoul and saved by an archangel.
On the other hand, overriding an entire experience with the simple phrase "clowns are scary" could lead to problems in later life. Not that Gabriel intended to be around for that.
He handed in his resignation, finished off the Poor Parents of the Year Awards (one particular prank involved replacing someone's leather couch with a live bull, but that was another story), and started skimming the help wanted ads. He felt it was time for a change in scenery. And a change in profession.
Something more menial. Like a labourer. Or a janitor.
(-*-)
When Sam next bumped into Gabriel, on a college campus he had been carefully terrorising for thirteen years, Gabriel had been a little put-out that Sam didn't remember him.
But then, he supposed, everyone looks different in those god-awful vests.