Disclaimer; I don't own a single thing. Not an ounce. Spoilers for "I Am Become Death".
Mockingbird
Hush little baby, don't say a word...
The gentle rise and fall and the sweet scent of a baby's breath... some would say it is a treasure, a miracle of life to be held flush against your chest, the blood of your own beating sleepily through those tiny limbs.
At first, Gabriel saw the tiny life in his arms as a burden.
Papa's gonna buy you a mocking bird...
But as soon as those eyes looked upon his, he was lost.
The first Mona Lisa smile.
The first apt expression of recognition.
The gentle snufflings of sleep over the monitor, pervading Gabriel's senses and filling his chest with a warmth that presses down that hunger inside him with a possessiveness that is almost... frightening.
And if that mockingbird don't sing...
And yet, despite the bloodthirsty nature in him that wells up at the most difficult of times... it is inconsequential compared to Noah. For as wonderful and vibrant as the sight of those delectable powers are, it is but a pale ghost against the first babbled words of his son, the first crawl and the first bite of a toy plastic brick... the child's first steps as he stumbles towards Gabriel, tiny steps, baby steps, falling into his arms with what he can only describe as primal accomplishment.
The emotion that swells up in Gabriel's chest is familiar, yet... skewed.
Pride.
Those sweet nonsensical babblings become a word -- Daddy -- a word associated with such warmth that at first Gabriel is shocked to feel such a thing.
Papa's gonna buy you a diamond ring...
But oh, the hunger is there still, lurking beneath the surface. Like something evil out of the fairy tales Gabriel murmurs to his son come bedtime, but this sense of purpose is what gives him the strength to reject it so vehemently.
Weeks become months, and months become years, the passage of time as untouchable as it ever was.
At the first sight of Peter, Gabriel knows.
Knows that this all too peaceful existence with his son is over.
And so, holding the broken form of his son in his arms, Gabriels finds that he has lost the strength that the very presence of his son had given him. The hunger swells inside like a broken storm unheeded, with no such barriers of love and family to hold it back. It burns inside him, the dual sensation of loss and fury permeating his very senses, until... until...
He loses control.
And all that's left inside is the broken carcass of a man, lost.