(A/N): This one Chapter is all I have at the moment. I liked the idea and I'm not even really sure where it came from at all. It sort of wrote itself one evening last month and I liked the atmosphere of it.
Depending on interest, there might be more to come, but I don't know yet.
Happy Reading!
Chapter One
Gabriel's been living amongst the humans since Heaven was closed. As an Archangel, he isn't quite as powerless as his fallen brethren, but nor is he as lethal as he used to be. As such he's carved a new home for himself here on Earth. He's what the kid's are calling an M.E. He still has powers and divine intuition, so diagnosing the dead is easy enough, and it was a breeze to forge himself a background, a work history, an education. Even find the tutor in a prestigious school who would have taught him, implant a few suggestions. She now remembers a young, eager Gabriel who did well on tests and performed with a steady hand. His hair was shorter back then. And he was leaner.
It's not the greatest life he's ever lived, and he's lived plenty, but it certainly beats cowering under rocks and running from his posturing older brothers. Or his whining, destruction-obsessed little brother, for that.
So it's not so bad. And the dead are usurprisingly simpler to deal with than the living. Gabriel diagnoses, explores a little, figures out what broke the meat suit, stitches it all back up and signs him or her a death certificate. It even has a sort of weary pride to it, too. Amongst the humans all the time now, he's become more susceptible to emotions. He's held a few grieving widows. While not pleasant, it's something he can do. Crying children, heart-broken teenagers clutching the hands of surviving parents and weeping unashamedly. It all sort of hurts, but he can provide something, something admittedly inadequate but substantial enough to be worth it.
He's found that even teenagers, however withdrawn or misunderstood, can be coaxed into accepting the sympathetic gesture of a sugared lollipop. Something childish, but familiar. Maybe chocolate, something to take the edge off the demons battling on their shoulders at their loss.
The Winchesters taught him this, he knows, when he's watching broken people leave his steel-and-chrome domain to head out into the living again. The Winchesters taught him this pain, this humanity. He doesn't know sometimes whether he wants to curse them or not. He hates feeling hurt, feeling unable to help, feeling so useless sometimes. But there's a beauty in it too, somewhere, he knows. It's something they would fight for, something they do fight for. He might never have been their biggest fans but he knows that if they deem it worth it, then there has to be something about it that's worth Gabriel's pain.
The first time he gets a body on his slab that's clearly a victim of the supernatural, Gabriel signs it off as an animal attack. That night when he closes up the morgue he heads into the woods instead of home, and he slaughters and burns himself a Werewolf. Every subsequent time, he works it out and gets rid of the threat. He's grown fond of many of the people in this little back-water town, and he'd like to see as few of them on his table as possible.
Life goes on as normal.
Until he starts seeing signs of something else, something he doesn't catch the first time, or the second, or the third. He's susceptible to human viruses now, and he's caught some stupid stomach bug from the idiot cashier at the grocery store, who evidently thinks she's okay to go to work while still contagious. He's been syphoning off a little of his depleted Grace at a time, trying to keep the bouts of nausea at bay enough to work, and not pass it on to anyone else.
The fourth body comes in and something is wrong. Gabriel can sense it. He's not sure what, and he's exhausted from puking all night every night this week, and he's always hungry despite having eaten already for the day and he knows he's a little more short-tempered than usual. Damn the Winchesters for introducing him to the guilt he feels when he snaps at his staff, at Cory the Receptionist/Office Administrator/general God-send upstairs who does extra hours when she thinks he doesn't see and who works her lunch unpaid when he's swamped, even though he knows she's got a kid at home and her husband's fucked off.
He's getting her paid the maximum of what he can, but without changing her schedule to less welcoming hours he can't get her anything more, and she needs to be regular for the kid who's still at school.
Before he starts the autopsy, Gabriel nips out for fresh air. When he comes back, he's brought Cory her lunch from the pricey restaurant he knows she likes, and he's organised that the girl next door to him pick her kid up after school. He tells her she either uses the break for some me-time or work her week's evening hours all at once tonight and get home at 2 the rest of the week. He tells her, truthfully, that he's sorry and that he hadn't meant to bite her head off when he came in this morning. He tries not to breathe on her when she hugs him tightly and tells him he's the best boss she's ever had.
He doesn't want her getting sick, or her kid getting sick. Or both.
He's only just started when the little box on the wall buzzes and Cory informs him he's got a couple of FBI agents upstairs. He tells her that's unusual, asks if she checked their badges. She confirms, after a moment, that she's double-checked. A few seconds later she buzzes through again and tells him they've taken it upon themselves to head down.
Gabriel curses, but only after he's thanked her and told her to make sure she eats her lunch before it's too cold. Her laugh makes him smile.
When the door opens, he's almost done rinsing the blood from his gloves before he takes them off, the head of his used scalpel deposited diligently into the sharps box on the counter.
"Be with you in a second, Gentlemen." he says, doing his best to keep his civil tone because he hates being interrupted mid-autopsy.
Despite having obtained a margin of the human distaste when it comes to death and gory bits, this is something Gabriel can do, that he's good at, and once he gets into a rhythm he hates to break it. Being sick also sucks.
It isn't until he's turned around, apron half-way untied and his best attempt at a polite smile on his face when he realises just why these agents are here.
Because they're not really agents, not official ones anyway, and certainly not FBI.
He sees them and he stills. The air in the room, which wasn't exactly fresh to start with despite the air-removal system being a pretty good one, seems to all but disappear as they stare at each other. He curses being sick, not catching those first three deaths that he's been working so hard to back-track on, because now he's fucked. His unobservant slip up has attracted the attention of Hunters, a pair of them.
Startled hazel and green eyes meet his as they both pause in their tracks, eyes wide and mouths open in surprise.
Because of course it'd be the fucking Winchesters who'd drop by when he made one mistake. While he happened to be ill, might he add.