The Meaning of the Word Love
As he stands over his brother's body, he considers the meaning of the word love. It is a human word without an Enochian equivalent – Enochian has words for loyalty, for devotion, for admiration, but not for love. Perhaps that is why Gabriel had chosen to speak English to him during their confrontation.
You're my brother, and I love you.
If you loved me, brother, why would you try to kill me? How can you kill someone you love? Lucifer had no illusions about his own version of love. He loved his father. He hated his siblings. They had betrayed him – Michael most of all, but truly all of them had. Thus, he could kill them, despite having loved them a long time ago.
So why was he crying over his brother's body? And why did Gabriel say he loved him?
Gabriel had always loved easily. The first time was long before they started speaking human languages to each other, before Gabriel's disappearance and before Lucifer's fall, even before the corruption of humanity. In the garden lived two people, not yet Adam and Eve, but rather Adam and Lilith. Lucifer and Gabriel had gone to the garden together, each trying to convince the other to view humanity their way.
Gabriel had stopped even considering Lucifer's arguments when he lay eyes on Lilith. In the garden, the humans wore no clothing. There was no need for modesty or for warmth. Lucifer thought they looked disgusting, like tall monkeys without their fur. But the minute Gabriel had laid eyes on Lilith, something in him changed. He drank in the strange shape of her body, the soft curves of her breasts and hips, the slim of her waist, the gold of her hair.
The normally harsh glow of his grace had softened, showing a golden hue. His wings were fluttering agitatedly. His eyes were wide open.
"What is going on with me?" his brother had whispered. He could not answer – none of them understood lust then, or love outside of family. When they left the Garden, Gabriel looking back every few minutes to Lilith still walking around. He went back to her afterwards often, to talk to her or just observe her. The gold in his grace deepened daily. Eventually he had gone to ask Michael about it.
Michael sighed when he saw him. "Father told me this would happen." He spoke the words without emotion, but Lucifer could see the pain in Michael's eyes.
Gabriel did not. "What? What is happening?" Michael just looked at him sadly.
"She belongs to Adam, brother." Gabriel whimpered in confusion, dismay, and devastation. A pang of something shot through Lucifer at the sound, but he could not place what he was feeling. Rather than analyzing it, he pushed it away and simply let his anger at humanity grow. Lilith had hurt his brother.
When he revealed the corruption of Lilith, he saw a change in Gabriel again. First he crumpled inwards, his despair growing, his wings tucked tightly against him. Then he looked again, and spoke hesitatingly. "Now… Now she does not belong to Adam anymore, does she?" Michael just looked at their brother with pity in his eyes. Soon after, Lucifer was cast out of heaven, and for a moment he realized all his actions had done was hurt his brother further.
From the cage, Lucifer could see what was going on in the rest of the universe. Over time, he saw Gabriel move on from Lilith, get over his feelings for her. Gabriel still did not understand what he had felt, but as Lucifer observed humanity he started to understand.
Lust.
Perhaps in time it could even have been love.
For the first time, he felt something close to regret. He pushed it away. He was right.
From the cage, he also saw Gabriel fall in love for the second time. Though Gabriel had left heaven even before Lucifer was locked up, then, he still occasionally showed up. Ran errands for their father.
He was given the task to tell some chosen woman she was pregnant, despite her intact virginity. Gabriel was clearly bothered by it – like all angels he understood consent to a fault, and he did not agree with their Father's decision to impregnate a girl who had not consented. Lucifer would have rebelled in such a situation, but Gabriel just took it in stride.
He told the girl – Mary, Lucifer believed – that she was to bear God's child. She was furious, and Lucifer laughed in delight at seeing the tiny spitfire curse out his little brother. Said little brother clearly loved it. His grace started glowing golden again, and for years after he went to observe the woman. He still did not realize he had fallen in love.
Michael found out and shook his head in sadness.
The cage was starting to beat Lucifer down. He tried to remember why he was enduring it, but slowly all his feelings except for his rage and betrayal disappeared. Looking at Gabriel's antics was a respite from it.
This time, it did not take so long for Gabriel to fall in love again. This time, it wasn't a human. It was a pagan god named Loki, a trickster.
Gabriel had been walking among humans. Sometimes he would wear female vessels, sometimes male ones – it did not make a difference to him. He would talk to humans, eat at their tables, even bed them. Lucifer looked on in fascination during every action. (Angels do not have physical forms. To look on his brother having sex while in a vessel was not embarrassing to him, aside from the general mess that human sex was.)
Usually Gabriel would only sleep with women while in a male vessel, and only with men while in a female vessel. Now however, he was wearing a man named Leif. He was walking around in Scandinavia. Such a strange land, filled with of pagan gods. While Gabriel was walking through the forest one of these gods approached him: Loki.
Loki was small and slight, with light brown hair and hazel eyes. He walked over to Gabriel in a way that would only have a proper word years later (swaggering. He swaggered over to Gabriel), and he backed him up into a tree.
"Well, hello there," he purred, "What is such a pretty angel doing in my land?" Gabriel's eyes had darkened in lust, and soon the pagan and the angel were a mess of tangled limbs on the forest floor.
Gabriel kept visiting Loki, but now he did understand what he was feeling. Loki taught him about lust and want and love. At first what they were doing was just fucking, but Lucifer could see their relationship change. Their sex became gentler, they started seeing each other without even having sex.
Intimacy was perhaps the best word for it. Lucifer watched Gabriel bite and kiss his way down Loki's body, marking him and making him gasp in pleasure. He watched Gabriel move inside the smaller man while kissing him. He watched Gabriel get to the point of release, and continually he had the urge to look away, to give them privacy.
It's just physical bodies. It does not – cannot – mean a thing.
A lie.
Michael found out at some point, and this time he did confront Gabriel about it. "Can you not just fall in love with an angel, if you must fall in love?" That was the last straw for Gabriel, and he disappeared completely.
There was no trail. No traces of grace, no long line of burned-out vessels (after all, there were no vessels left who could contain him for a longer period of time). Lucifer supposes he should have known where to find Gabriel. Loki had given himself up for his lover's safety.
Lucifer got freed from his cage, and he did not expect to find his brother again. Then Gabriel confronted him when he was about to kill some pagan goddess.
A vague sense of surprise took ahold of him at seeing his brother in the body of Loki, a body he had last seen writhing beneath Gabriel in pleasure. He shook it off - he should have know.
Gabriel had only ever defied his brothers for one reason: Love. This time it was for another pagan, a goddess this time, by the name of Kali. Lucifer had been prepared to kill her, just like the other pagans in the hotel. Instead he got thrown to the other end of the room by a power he thought he would never feel again.
"Luci. I'm home," his brother had spoken, and Lucifer had felt an unbearable sadness. He knew the ending of this story. He had questioned Gabriel, teased him, and asked him to join him, all the while already knowing his answer.
Gabriel had always loved humanity. He fell in love with humans, he learned their ways, he would do anything for him.
"I know where your heart lies. Here." He had whispered it, hissed it at his baby brother – why did he have to be so stubborn?
Here. With a pagan goddess.
Here. With the remnants of a spirit left within his vessel.
Here. With a long dead woman who had been chosen by God.
Here. With a demon now dead to let Lucifer rise.
Here. With humanity.
The worst part was that there was no regret in Gabriel's eyes. Only sadness that it had gotten to this, and more aggravatingly, pity.
Now he is standing over Gabriel's body. He studies the ashes left by his wings, studies his face – oh so peaceful in death. The realization hits him hard.
Gabriel was prepared to kill him because of love. Not just love for humanity, but even love for Lucifer himself. Gabriel had believed that life is worth nothing without love, and Lucifer had none. Gabriel had taken pity on him, and given him one last chance to walk away from this path, and had only pitied him more when he realized that Lucifer did not remember what love felt like.
His vessel supplies him with an expression. The line between love and hate is thin. Tears silently stream down Lucifer's face. They burn in the sores covering his skin. He relishes in the pain.
Now he realizes what Gabriel has known all along - but it is too late. He cannot change his path anymore. He steels himself, steels his heart, and turns away. He walks out of the building, not ever looking back. It is time to get his vessel and kill Michael.