The sky thrummed with his grace. There was an aching, gaping, maw in all of existence as he stared at the scene before him. It had been there, in that room, he could see the pulsating radiating thrum of something other. It was something familiar, yet so very different. The breaking of a promise but the opening for something more.
Even now, as he looked upon the building. Of the smooth cobble structure, the dead black lights that spelled three words. The words that had created the final trap, the trap that ensnared him, he was left to contemplate, to stare and to breathe and attempt to comprehend the destructive loss that had occurred in this location.
It was dull, in a way, nothing as destiny had called for. A single fluke in the grand scheme, the horn that screamed the end was nigh. The trigger of the end. As he stood, as he stared upon the scene, he was trapped in his own ache. Not a single other angel in Heaven would ever realize what had taken place here, none of them would care enough to do so. They were too trapped by orders, too burdened by something that was never meant to be.
Free will.
It was the first great creation by God, the best, and the one that had taken it. The one that twisted and used it for something good. The one that had used it for an escape.
Well, he was everywhere around them.
"Angel." A goddess breathed to him, power thrumming beneath her skin, raw and pure. "What do we do?"
A breath escaped him, unnecessary but steadying. There was another way. There was always another way. If the trumpet never sounded, if it returned to its previous state, it would never expose itself. The solution was simple.
The cost? It was something he had never wished to pay.
"How long can you suspend this instant?"
"An hour at the most." The goddess responded, bowing her head, "I am sorry, angel. If I had known-"
"You would have done the same as you did before, because you're proud and arrogant. Don't pretend to be less than you actually are. It doesn't suit you."
"Very well."
"I need five minutes alone with him."
"Ba-"
"Five minutes." When she made no attempt to interrupt him again he willed his vessel's feet to move, crossing the threshold into the pocket of grace.
Despite every instinct to do so, every shout of his grace and thrumming rejoice as he was caressed by what was lost, he didn't return to contact, couldn't afford to risk it. There was too much at stake, too many potentially dangerous outcomes if he failed in his final task. Even as the grace poked and prodded him, buzzed against his grace and flooded every inch of his memories with happiness and joy that he hadn't felt in millennia.
"I'm here." The words fell from his tongue, feeling heavy and final. As though they were the heaviest promise in the world, the oldest secret. Perhaps they were, though it was likely that others knew. "You died for them. Why would you do that? Knowing the price… You had to know." There had been a time where they hadn't needed to say what they meant, a time when they simply knew.
"I watched Father create everything, I watched the stars and moons and planets come together but nothing compares to what I see here and now. Nothing compares to you."
"You don't mean that."
"Would I have challenged Michael if it was not true?" I would die for you.
Shuddering slightly, he pressed forward. The glass on the entrance had shattered with the shockwave of his death, there was a low crackle from one of the destroyed lights, ethereal light dancing across the surrounding area the only source of light. It lit a hallway lined in blood and corpses, the bodies of the gods, the aftermath of the snare. "Seven billion of them, and you threw yourself away for two."
"It has to happen. Come with me."
"I want to hate you for it." Why was he talking to him? What was the point? The reality was simple, the reality said that he couldn't hear. The residual may have remained, the residue of him, but it wasn't sentient, it didn't see, retain what happened around it. It was simply a presence. Yet, it distracted him from the pressure against the skin of his vessel, the insistent movement as he tried to make contact. Or, the memory of him. The playful brushing of that ancient grace.
Pausing for a moment he willed himself to focus on the task. Four minutes, what could four minutes give him that had been lost for thousands? What more could he say that wasn't already known? The things that had happened them, they had never been a secret to the other. Those were the stone-cold facts of that time, before he had ultimately refused to leave.
"It is forbidden."
The doors opened slowly, metal hinges creaking in the otherwise silent hotel as the scene unfolded before him.
Every instinct screamed for him to shut his eyes. All except one, the one that demanded he look at the sight before him, of the image of both Gabriel and his vessel sprawled on the floor in a messy heap.
A choked sound escaped him at the sight, at the image of the messenger left dead on the floor, of the concept that Lucifer had left him there. No ceremony, likely no apology, just his death and… gone.
He felt sick.
There were only five angels left from the beginning, of the time before Lucifer was corrupted and destroyed by the Mark. Five of all of the angels that had been present in Heaven during that time. Five that could truly and utterly comprehend the prospect that Lucifer had killed Gabriel, of why it was so wrong.
It was to his misfortune that he never knew.
"I am sorry." The grace thrumming around him pressed closer as he stepped into the room and he was unsure whether it was because of the proximity of the corpse, or the response of the memories stored within it. "When Castiel told us of your return, when he betrayed that trust, I should have come. The moment you were involved I should have known. I won't ever take the blame for this, because this was you being selfish and so bloody stupid but-" Pausing, he took a deep. "You did what you believed in. Whatever stupid reason that was, you did what you thought you must. Now I'm doing what I know I must and it will utterly destroy me." Every step forward was like stepping through quicksand, his vessel and force of will battling what he knew he must do. "All because you were a fool, all because you chose to die."
"What if Father sees? These are human things and we must not-"
"It is so much fun, en gerra. Don't think, just close your eyes and I'll show you."
Carefully he sat next to the archangel, pressing his palm against his cheek and flinching at the chill from dead skin. It was who he'd been for years. When Gabriel had taken this body, he had been there. From the moment Gabriel had taken it, he had sworn to never taken another body and he hadn't. This had been the first body that he had-
No. Dwelling was not on his list, that was not the plan. The plan was to remember.
"Hold my hand." We're about to do something stupid.
"Gabriel?" Will it kill me?
"You trust me, right?" You love me, right?
"Of course." Always.
"Take my hand." If we die, it will be together.
Breathing deeply, he crossed his legs and wrapped his fingers around the cold fingers of the archangel's corpse. "Kali will be here soon. I don't know what it will cost, but there will be a price. Magic like this always has a price." For a long moment he stared, taking in the sight of the corpse of Heaven's youngest archangel, before at last he looked away from it to the scorch marks of his wings.
He deserved so much more.
After pressing a soft kiss to the forehead of the youngest archangel he carefully rose to his feet. Turning his head to the door behind him, Kali stepped through, expression carefully neutral.
"This is your fault."
"I'm aware." Averting her gaze, she crossed the space and knelt on the opposite side of his body. "May I?"
"Do you have to?" He asked with a bitter glare and she narrowed her eyes.
"You understand that I loved him as well, right?"
"You stabbed him in the heart!"
"You stabbed him in the back." She returned harshly, "I know your name, angel. I know what you meant to him. His species may have been his secret but he never forgot your name. He knew what I would do to him if I learned the truth, but you? You betrayed his faith in you."
"I- I couldn't leave Heaven. It was… we were at war. You can never comprehend what we were going through there!"
"Not specifically, no. My point remains that you are shunning me for something you did as well. I am in an impossible position. We are desperate. We might have made a mistake, but it was our mistake to make. Both of us. I will never judge you for your choices, but if you return the judgement I will burn you alive and find another angel that cares enough to help."
"What do you want me to say? That I regret it? That I should have been here?"
"Nothing at all. I just want you to stop treating me as though I am less."
"How long?" He asked after a long moment of staring at her, his heart aching violently and a breakdown of true emotion he had never dared to release threatening to escape him. "How long were you… together?"
"Two hundred years." She breathed out with a bitter laugh, pressing her palm against his cheek and staring down at him, "Then another hundred were spent as friends with benefits. So many times your name came up, slipped from his tongue during the worst of times, it was ultimately why I broke things off." She admitted with a tired sigh, "Nothing is harsher than loving a man in love with someone else. I suppose it was why I went to Baldur, there was no overly complicated history tying him down."
"He was my sun. I remember sitting with him by the sun and deciding nothing could shine brighter than him. en ror."
"He called you en gerra. It was what gave him away. I know Enochian."
"How long did you know?"
"I knew from the first time he spoke of you. I allowed him to hide for a long time because I loved him, but then he came here and… he left me no other choice. I did as I had to."
"Maybe we have more in common than either of us would like to admit." Carefully he knelt next to him again, touching the other side of his face and taking a deep breath. "What will it cost?"
"Something strong, primal." Hesitating, she lifted her gaze to meet his. "It will ruin you."
"What is it?" He asked, having already known that it wouldn't be a small price. It was never a small price, especially when it came to magic, and more than anything when it was related to magic of this strength, the type of magic that could resurrect an archangel.
"You."
Closing his eyes, he refused to look at her because- no, she wasn't talking about his death. He knew she wasn't talking about his death, but he had to pretend because the in the face reality of what it would cost…
The concept that it truly meant enough to pay this price?
The idea that he had thrown something like that aside for Heaven?
It cemented a single fact, the one he had embraced freely since it all began.
"I will never be what you need. I am so much less."
"You are all I need. You are my everything."
"I will die for him. In a heartbeat." It had to be that simple. He prayed to his Father that it was that easy, that all he had to do was die, because the alternative was so much worse.
"Primal, angel. He is old and powerful, a life for a life would never be enough. Not from you."
"How much more?" His eyes remained closed, voice cracking as he felt himself dying on the inside, no amount of his grace pressing against him, playful and light, could ever solve the avalanche of emotions threatening to explode from him.
"The price will be his love, a hundred years of your uninterrupted grief which means-"
"-I won't be able to die." For a hundred years, he wouldn't be able to die. Was it worth it? Was there any reason to do it? Did he truly love the archangel enough to suffer that time with the knowledge that he was no longer loved by the only being that was worth a damn to him.
Well, that answer was simple enough.
"How does it work?"
"I have to admit, I am impressed." The goddess offered her hand, "You won't feel anything, not at first, but-"
"I know what it will do."
"For what it is worth, I am truly, sincerely, sorry." When he took her hand she squeezed it gently, sympathy surrounding her aura and he didn't fight her on it because the harsh, bitter, reality of what was about to happen was beginning to crash down on him. The terrible truth of what he was doing, of why he was doing it.
Not why it mattered to the world, but why it mattered to him. The world could burn for all he cared, because his world was about to forget him. This spell would make Gabriel forget the deep, ancient, bond that resided between their very cores. It would destroy him and no amount of deaths would be able to save him from it, not for a hundred years, and he didn't want them to. This was his choice, his choice between the death of the love of his life, and the chance to let him live. Even if it was without him. They had been apart for thousands of years… so why did this hurt so much more?
When Kali began chanting he felt a tug at his grace, and insistent nudging that felt almost like a plea. Glancing down revealed a portion of Gabriel's grace pressing insistently at his heart, and he realized a moment too late what it meant- what the blatantly obvious fact he had been in denial about since the moment of his arrival was.
Because if he accepted it… he would have made the wrong choice. If he had chosen to believe for a moment that Gabriel's grace was anything but memories, if he had allowed him any influence. He would have lost the will. When it came to Gabriel, when he truly insisted, he never refused.
"I cannot go with you." If you ask me again I will.
"Then you can stay." I will never make you Fall.
"It is done." Kali breathed a moment later the archangel between them gasping in a sharp desperate breath of air and drawing every ounce of grace from the room in a singular, silent moment.
"Gabriel." He fell back an inch, staring at his most loved brother who was whipping his head around wildly with first horror that slowly warped to confusion before his gaze settled on Kali.
"Why?"
"I repay my debts." She responded solemnly, raising to her feet and dusting her dress off.
Slowly, torturously so, Gabriel's head turned. Every ounce of his being screamed when he was met with indifference, when the archangel looked at him with less recognition than a human child gave a goldfish.
Just another angel.
"Your name… seems it's slipped my mind." Frowning, the archangel rose to his feet, gaze burning into him with scrutiny. "Kali?"
"I needed grace for the spell." The goddess lied with zero hesitation and his heart fractured more and more as the archangel nodded absently, touching his own chest. "Are you alright?"
"I need to recharge a bit. Look ah… Baraniah?"
"Balthazar." He barely held himself together, barely resisted the sob that threatened to escape him as his sun remained oblivious to his identity.
"I'm guessing you knew about my connection to the Apocalypse?"
Swallowing heavily, he turned his head, closed his eyes, "Horn of the Apocalypse. You die, humanity has no chance."
"Knowing that, knowing you put an effort forward, remember this. You saw nothing." Gabriel continued on, shifting slightly as his wings flexed on the ethereal plane, "Capeesh?"
"Yes." He responded, turning his head away because he simply couldn't.
Gabriel leaving him… it had never been like this. There had been hope, a chance.
A hundred years.
"Thanks for the help, Balthie-"
He disappeared in a violent flutter of wings before Gabriel could say anymore, before the archangel could break his heart further.
"Can we say it once?"
The solution was a bitter one, an answer that would be his only way to ever cope.
"One time, gerra. Three galaxies away, they can never know there."
The solution, the one and only solution.
"Neve there. So, Gabe?"
He had to let it go. All of it. He had to fake his death, he had to get away.
"Yes, Balthie?"
He had to stop caring. Not just for those close to him, but for everyone, for everything.
"I love you, en ror." I love you and I will fight all of Heaven to stay with you. Forever.
He had to stop feeling.
"I love you, en gerra." I love you and will protect you to the ends of existence.
.-~*~-.
Bad Enochian!
en ror – my sun
en gerra – my moon
So I really wanted to do a Balthazar/Gabriel something but I didn't want another full length fic under my belt. It took a bit but I finally decided on this short thing that resurrected Gabriel, because of course, and indirectly explained Balthazar's attitude in season 6. Mainly it was for fun. And it was, even when it hurt.
Not saying his name at the start was a hundred percent intentional as well as not tagging him at all.