Everybody Limbo!
Disclaimer: I don't own these chess pieces, I just like to move them around on the board and make up my own rules. Everything you recognise belongs to the network, Kripke, and the team of hard-working people who make Supernatural possible.
Rating: Rated M, for mature. Why? Because I fucking said so.
Author's notes ahead. Give them a scan, if you want some idea of what's going on.
Author's Note: Despite knowing where I want it to go, I have no idea how long this story is going to be. This chapter was surprising to write because I kept finding that the characters wanted to stop and talk a whole lot more than I expected. Exposition being an unavoidable but very necessary evil, I hope this tendency will wane as we go on. Also, reviews are amazing. Negative reviews are better than no reviews and good reviews are like chapter-writing Wheaties; they fuel the creation!
Author's Note 2: Unless you're especially interested in World War Two Pacific-theatre war criminals, there may come a point in this chapter where you go, "Who the hell is that?" Bear with me; there will be a biographical note at the end for those that are interested. If you're not interested, don't worry, it won't destroy your comprehension of the rest of the story if you write it off. Now, on with the show!
Chapter One
Grey Sky Mourning
Jo reaches out, her fingers ghosting over soft, springy threads of something. She curls her fingers around the strands, pulling softly, finding only the barest amount of give. She inhales and the air flows into her lungs easy and clean, but there's no smell to it.
Opening her eyes, a canvas of blank grey greets her. She blinks and opens her eyes again. Still grey. She shuts her eyes, squeezes them closed until she can see bright spots dancing on the backs of her eyelids and then she opens them again. Still grey.
Slowly, carefully because she remembers that she has just been practically ripped in half by a hellhound, Jo sits up, her view shifting until the blank grey she was looking at is overtaken by even more grey.
Jo is sitting in a field of grass—what can only reasonably be called a meadow—surrounded by a forest of trees behind her and up ahead opening to a steep embankment down towards a body of water, what looks like it could be a river. What's more, all of it is grey. The trees, the grass, the water, even the damn sky is grey. It's like someone dumped her into the middle of an old black-and-white episode of Lassie.
"What the…" Jo trails off. Her voice sounds strange, echoey like her mother's voice had been. It was sort of like listening to herself talk from another room. "What the hell?"
Jo stands, brushing off bits of grey grass from her grey jeans with her grey hands. She moves those hands to the hem of her grey tee-shirt, hesitating, and then pulling the shirt up a little, rubbing fingers against her abdomen where she can remember the hellhound tearing into her flesh. There's nothing there now but undamaged skin, like nothing had ever happened. There's no pain, either. Not even the dull ache of remembered pain.
The second thing she does is check to make sure that she still has her father's iron knife on her. When she finds it tucked away in the same place it always is, Jo breathes a sigh of relief at not being left completely defenceless. Somewhat reassured, she begins to evaluate her surroundings with the hope of finding answers.
The meadow isn't exactly sunny because the word 'sunny' brings to mind things like 'warm' and 'clear' and 'cheery' and this place is none of those things.
It is bright though, like how it would be if the sun shined the brightest shade of grey imaginable. Besides being bright it's also hazy. Not the heavy haze of fog, because the air isn't cold enough for that. It's more like someone smeared Vaseline over the edges of the world. Jo hopes that doesn't mean she has brain damage or something. Though, it might explain the whole lack-of-colour thing.
She stands there in the not-sunny meadow for a few minutes, turning her head one way towards the forest and then the other way towards the river, trying to decide. Left or right? Forest or river? Which way to go?
Jo walks forward, stopping once she reaches the top of the dirt embankment that eases down to the river's shore. The embankment is broken up by outcroppings of rocks and the twisted gnarls of old tree roots. The leaves on the trees rustle as a gentle breeze rolls through the meadow and caresses against her cheek. Instead of being refreshing or comforting, it just feels like air moving for the sake of moving.
She figures that she can probably scale the embankment safely enough using the rocks and roots to hike a path down to the shore, but looking out at the river she sees nothing but water. There's no shore on the other side and if she craned her head up and down the length of the river, there was nothing to see but more water stretching on to both horizons.
Deciding that a butt-ton of water isn't going to help her figure anything out, she turns back towards the trees at the other edge of the meadow. She is just about to head through a break in the forest when she hears something, far off and muted but steadily becoming more and more insistent.
mmmmmmmmnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaa, the sound buzzes, low but slowly growing stronger. She walks back into the centre of the meadow where the sound is the clearest.
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAA, it continues, still growing louder. Jo turns in a slow circle, looking for the source.
The sound reaches its peak, calling her attention to the sky above her head.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"
Something bright and colourless streaks out of the dull grey sky, falling fast, and Jo has only enough time to take a giant leap backwards before it slams into the grass at her feet.
When the shock wares off from nearly being crushed by something falling cartoon-style out of the sky, she tentatively looks the thing over. There's dark hair and shoulders and a body attached to them and Jo dimly realises that it's a person, a man more specifically, lying face down in the middle of the meadow.
"Mmmmnnnnuuuuuhhhh," the man moans, muffled by the grass.
Jo is surprised to hear him make any sound at all. At the velocity he'd been travelling, it's a miracle he isn't a slick goo of man-soup on the grass.
She takes a step towards him, cautious because, hey, even if this guy just face-planted into the middle of a field like he'd gone parachuting without the whole parachute part, she's still going to be on her guard.
"You okay?" Her tone is the verbal equivalent of prodding him with a stick.
The guy rolls over onto his back, his eyes scrunched shut and his narrow face contorted in discomfort. "Gaaaaahhhh," he moans again. Even despite his distorted expression, she doesn't recognise him as anyone she's ever seen before.
He's dressed casually in a light-ish canvas motorcycle jacket, a pair of dark jeans, and a dark button down shirt with the first three buttons undone, leaving a bit of his chest exposed. He's also just as grey as everything else.
"Hey, are you okay?" She kicks out towards his side with the edge of her boot to lightly prod him with more than just words.
A pair of grey eyes snap open to stare up, past her, to the sky.
"I dunno," the guy answers, his voice hoarse but oddly conversational, his small mouth quirked in a contemplative frown. His head follows the slant of his frown as he studies the sky. "Is everything supposed to be that colour?"
Jo lifts both hands and drops them to her sides helplessly. "You tell me."
Slowly, because that seems to be the word of the day, the guy sits up and runs a hand through his hair, pushing back stands away from his face and behind his ears. He looks around the meadow, taking it all in as he cautiously climbs to his feet, standing not terribly taller than herself, towering all of maybe three inches above her.
His gaze shifts from their surroundings to Jo, giving her such a thorough leer from the ends of her boot-laces to the top of her head that she thinks she might need a shower when he's done.
"What're you?" he asks.
Jo frowns, taken aback by the question. "What am I?"
"Yeah, human, angel, demon, none of the above… All of the above? Wouldn't that be something," he muses, almost to himself.
"Uh… human," she responds, but it comes out almost as a question. Stating that simple fact makes her feel uncertain and strange.
"Really?" he clips, looking at her carefully. "'Cause you don't sound too sure of yourself there, Princess."
"Jo."
"Nah," he shakes his head, "that's not my name."
"That's my name," she says, gritting her teeth. How is it possible to be instantly irritated by someone? "It's Jo, not 'Princess'."
"Jo," he says, as if tasting the name in his mouth. "Jo, Jo, Jo. Short for…?"
All of her mother's old lectures to about talking to strangers suddenly come to mind. That's why when she opens her mouth, 'Josephine' tumbles out instead of Joanna Beth.
"Uh-huh," he says, giving her a shrewd look, almost like he doesn't quite believe her. He doesn't call her on though and then he's on to a different expression, this one light and cheerful.
"Well, Josie," she winces at the nickname and grumbles "Jo," as a correction, but he doesn't seem to pay any attention as he sweeps past her, turning in a slow circle like a showman at the circus and announcing, "I… am Gabriel."
She shrugs. "Alright."
He waits, eyebrows arched expectantly, but before long disappointment soaks into his expression as it becomes clear that she wasn't awed by him at all.
"Gabriel?" he repeats, as if saying it with more emphasis will induce the desired effect.
"Ok." She shrugs again, uncomfortably offering, "Hi?"
"Ugh!" He lets out a grunt of disgust, shaking his head. "Don't they teach you humans anything anymore?"
He begins to pace, cutting a small path back and forth in the grass, like a lion she once saw in a zoo when she was seven.
"You know," he declares wistfully, wagging a finger at her, "there was a time—mind you, we're talking the early days before Jesus became one with the wood—when I could come down to Earth, say my name in front of a crowd of thousands and have garlands thrown at my feet!"
"Yeah, well, I guess garlands are so twenty centuries ago," she deadpans.
Jo contemplates leaving him here and going off into the forest as had been her original plan. It's obvious she's not going to get any answers from crazy, pacing guy.
"Listen…uh…" She draws a blank.
"Gabriel," he supplies with exasperation, his expression aghast as he stops pacing to face her. "The archangel? Ringing any bells?"
Jo doesn't even try to keep her blatant scepticism from showing. "You're an angel?"
"Don't look so surprised, Princess," he simpers.
"Jo." She again corrects through clinched teeth.
"Josie," he amends with a long-suffering sigh, as if he's making a big compromise.
In an instant the smirk is back. "Sometimes big things come in deceptively compact packages," Gabriel says, leering at her again.
Jo executes an exaggerated gag, rolling her eyes in response. He just shrugs, smirk still in place.
"Well," he says brightly, clapping his hands together, "this has been a blast, Kiddo. Really, it has, but I've gotta get going. You know, things to see, people to do." He raises his right hand, thumb and middle finger poised, "Bye now!"
He snaps.
Nothing happens.
Gabriel frowns, snaps again.
Again, nothing happens.
Jo folds her arms across her chest and levels an amused smirk of her own at his building befuddlement.
"Huh," he frowns, examining his fingers and then doing a more critical sweep of their dull, grey surroundings. "Well that's not good."
"Would you-" He stumbles over a bit of exposed tree root, jogging forward a little to stay on his feet. "Would you slow down?"
"No," she replies over her shoulder, cutting through the grey foliage a few paces ahead of him with a determined stride. By her figuring they've been walking through the forest for about ten minutes and Gabriel has spent the entire time complaining. "No one said you had to come with me. If you don't like it, feel free to go back"
"Oh and what? Wait around in Bambi-land until the end of time?" He scoffs, "No thanks."
"Then either shut up or walk faster," she says, offering, "Gold star if you can do both."
"In case it has escaped your notice, Sweet Cheeks," he stops, tossing an aggravated look at her back, "we don't need to run anywhere. You know why? 'Cause there's nobody chasing us!"
Jo pauses and turns back to him, her jaw set tight with irritation. "That's not the point. We need to keep going."
Gabriel lets out a derisive chuckle, his arms flailing out wide as he gives her a pointed look. "Where?"
Her entire expression reads as intense irritation as she crossed her arms over her chest and scowls. It's obvious that she doesn't have an answer.
"Look," he continues, voice slightly condescending, "we ain't on our way to Grandma's house, here. I told you, we're stuck in Limbo. There is literally nowhere to go. This?" he motions to the forest around them, "Is all there is."
"I don't buy it." Jo says, shaking her head. Turning around, she resumes walking.
"And I'm not selling," he replies, following along behind her—albeit at a slower pace. "That's just the way it is, Jo-Jo."
"Don't call me that."
Gabriel's lips quirk at her irritation. He was going to enjoy pushing her buttons. "Are you always this pleasant or is this a recent development since being dead?"
"I'm not dead."
"Oh, no?" he laughs, picking up his pace a little to come up even with her, smirking at her stony expression. "Tell me then, Cupcake, what's the last thing you remember before this place? Hmm?"
After a moment of contemplation her stride falters and she stares off into the woods for a moment, absorbed in thought. Things are still a little fuzzy and disjointed in her mind, but she can remember her mother's arm around her at some point and pain and cold and then…then…there's nothing after that.
She glances over to Gabriel who's grinning at her like the Cheshire Cat.
"Shut up," she snaps and starts walking again.
"I told you," he intones, following after her.
"I'm not dead."
"Oh, yes you are. You," he coos, reaching out with his index finger and swiping at her nose, making her recoil and bat his hand away from her face, "my angry little Spitfire, have all the vitality of a box of rocks."
"Okay," she says resignedly, stopping abruptly and forcing him to jerk to a halt beside her. "If I really am dead then what the hell am I doing here? Shouldn't I be in Heaven? I led a pretty good life. I mean, Jesus, I killed fucking evil for a living!"
"Maybe it was all that profanity and blaspheming?" Gabriel suggests, casually studying his fingernails.
Jo lets out a suppressed grumbled of irritation and fights the urge to pull her hair out. Instead she stops away without so much as a backwards glance to him.
She doesn't really care if he follows her or not.
"All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey," Gabriel sings, badly and off-key. "I've been for a waaaalk, on a winter's day." He repeats 'on a winter's day,' almost under his breath, imitating background singers.
They've been walking for over an hour or so and to Jo's utter amazement and horror Gabriel only gets more annoying the more time you spend with him, not less.
"Please stop."
"I'd be safe and warm, if I was in L.A.," he continues singing, as if she had never said anything. "California dreamin', on such a winter's daaaaaaayyyyy!"
"Please," she begs. It's not a very becoming thing to do and it makes her feel a little stupid, but she's getting desperate.
Then Gabriel does the unimaginable and stops singing. She waits all of a minute before starting to thank deities and saints but—wouldn't you know it—without warning he roars into the next verse, proving that he was only lulling her into a false sense of security. The bastard.
"Stopped into a church," He starts to snap the tune out with his fingers, "I passed along the way."
"No," she groans. "Make it stop!"
Jo picks up her pace, hoping to put some distance between them, but he keeps up with steady determination, singing at her as she grinds her teeth together and stomps over innocent plant-life like it has wronged her in some profound way.
"Well, I got down on my knees," he practically wails at the side of her very un-amused face, "and I pretend to pray."
"I will give you anything to stop," is her heartfelt promise.
"You don't have anything," he replies, grinning sweetly at her. "You know the preacher likes the cold."
"Kill me," Jo pleads, crushing a grey daisy under her boot.
"You're already dead, Muffin," Gabriel casually reminds. "He knows I'm gonna stay. California dreamin', on such a winter's daaaaaaaay!"
She expects the water to be cool, wants it to be, but it's not.
Jo guesses they've been hiking for about three hours now and she's starting to feel a little hot and slightly sticky. It had been a pleasant surprise stumbling across the little stream cradled in a shallow valley in the forest and when she'd signalled that they were stopping for a rest here, she imagined how nice it would feel to dip her hands into the cool water before pressing her wet fingers against the back of her neck.
But the water in the stream isn't cold. It isn't warm either. It's tepid, just like the air. Just like everything else here.
She wants to grumble about that but a glance over at Gabriel—lounging on a rock, head thrown back like he's a sunbather in Maui, apparently not a care in the world—is enough to convince her to keep her mouth shut. Talking might encourage him to talk back and she's still basking in the wonderful treasure that is 'silence' in Gabriel's presence. When the guy got going, he really could not shut up.
But he had fallen quiet awhile ago after seeming to have run through an entire set-list of classic '70s folk songs, weaving his off-key rendition of "California Dreamin'" with "Going Up the Country," which had then morphed into "A Whiter Shade of Pale," that segued into "Brown Eyed Girl." He had dropped off mid-way through "American Pie," somewhere around the verse about the jester stealing the King's thorny crown when the King wasn't paying attention, his mood turning unexpectedly melancholy.
Jo flicks water off her hands and stands on the bank of the stream, drying her fingers on her jeans before easing herself down beneath a tree across from Gabriel's rock. He still has his head thrown back, legs crossed at the ankles, arms braced out behind him, ignoring her.
She should've known that her luck wasn't going to last.
"You know," he says conversationally and totally out of the blue, like it has only been minutes and not nearly an hour since he last opened his mouth, "streams were my idea."
"What the hell are you talking about?" she wearily sighs, digging a small hole in the grey dirt with the heel of her boot.
"Streams. You know, a little bit of water running over shallow… you know," he gesturs vaguely towards the water, "that. My idea."
Jo is understandably sceptical. "You thought up streams?"
"Yep." A nostalgic grin slides into place even as his words turn a little caustic. "Sure, Dad thought up the vast oceans and mighty rivers and deep lakes for you upright monkeys, but I said let there be babbling brooks and lapping tributaries and yea, verily it was so."
"So you're sticking with the whole angel-thing then?"
"Archangel-thing," he automatically corrects, head still thrown back like he's checking the sky for cracks. "And yes."
"What's the difference?"
"Sorry?"
"What is the difference?" She says more slowly this time, making him drop his gaze to her. "I mean," she continues, shrugging, "say I believe you—and I'm not saying I do—but what's the difference? Angel, archangel; aren't they basically the same?"
Gabriel sputters, sitting up on his rock, eyes squinting at her in disapproval and what she thinks might be offence. "The same? That's like saying there's no difference between a four star general and the guy who licks the spark plugs in the motor pool."
"Spark plugs?"
"Okay," he sighs, hands coming up to illustrate as he talks. "Intro to Angels 101: all archangels are angels but not all angels are archangels, kay? There's an order to things. First you have your archangels, like me, at the top of the pile. God created us first and then he created all the lower castes of angels—watchers, cherubim, virtues, etc.—and organised them into legions for us to command."
"Like an army," Jo says, contemplative.
"Exactly."
"And you were a general."
"Yep."
"But you're…" A lot of words spring to mind: loud, obnoxious, ridiculous, childish, even the twisting, vaguely mean adjective she feels just a little guilty for thinking…short.
"What," he smirks, standing up off his rock and stretching his arms over his head, "devastatingly handsome? Yes, I know."
He looks down at her like he knows all about the less-than-kind adjectives swirling around in her head, but he doesn't look particularly wounded or upset, just amused. For some reason that irritates her.
She grits her teeth. "That's not what I-"
"Don't let the outside fool ya, Kid," he says, cutting her off with a wink. "What you're seeing is just the frosting."
She squints up at him, her gaze assessing. "Meaning?"
"This," he says, casually tapping his chest as he smiles down at her, "is just my vessel. My true form is so powerful that if I went walking around out there in my birthday suit, I'd go frying people's eyes right outta their heads. People tend not to dig the whole permanent blindness thing so much, so I threw on this old thing back in the day."
Jo worries on her lower lip and tries to think of a way to phrase what she wants to ask without it coming off the wrong way. "But why-"
"Why am I not Brad Pitt?" he guesses. "Why all the phenomenal cosmic power shoved inside the itty-bitty dorky guy?"
"Well… Yeah."
"We're not like demons," he explains with surprising patience. "We can't just beam down here and hop in any ride we want. It's kinda like online dating, all the stats have to match up."
"So you and this guy," she waves a hand at Gabriel, "you guys clicked or whatever?"
"Something like that," Gabriel replies, his tone vague and evasive in a way that makes Jo suspect that there's more to the story than that.
Before she can press him about it though another thought occurs to her.
"If you're an archangel-"
"Not that you believe me or anything," he teases.
Her nod is dismissive. "Right, but, if you're an archangel, what are you doing here? Don't you have better places to be?"
"Oh, sister, you have no idea," he smirks.
Jo just stares at him and after a moment he rolls his eyes and relents. "You want the long or the abridged version?"
She flaps a hand at their surroundings pointedly, as if to say that there isn't a whole lot else going on at the moment. "Long version."
Gabriel simply shrugs, "No idea."
Jo blinks at him. "What the hell was the short version?"
"There wasn't a shrug."
"That's bullshit."
"I don't know what you want me to tell ya, Pancake," he sighs. "All's I know is one minute I'm getting shanked by my big bro like I'm an extra on "OZ" and the next I'm doing a Wily E. Coyote into God's grey Earth."
"You were stabbed by your brother?"
"Right here!" he cries dramatically, pulling the open collar of his shirt down to show off the skin over his heart, grumbling, "The cumwad."
"You two sound close."
"Yeah, note to self, don't call Lucifer a great big bag of dicks again," he carpes. "Makes him a little stab-y."
The names sent a jolt through her. "Lucifer?" The context of her last few minutes on Earth slowly begins seep into her memory, like those minutes were becoming unstuck behind some invisible barrier somewhere in her mind.
"Yep," he confirms, oblivious to her growing distress, "my big brother Luci. Let's just say absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder, it makes it grow bitchier. Dude's totally lost it. I mean, he was never all that stable to begin with but now? It's like he's cranked the crazy all the way up to eleven and snapped the knob off for kicks!"
"When did this happen?" She demands, a little breathless over the memory of her own death.
"The knob snapping?"
"Lucifer," Jo presses, insistent. "When did he stab you? What was the date?"
"I dunno," he shrugs, slightly defensive under her scrutiny. "I don't really pay all that much attention to time the way you hairless apes do. It was… July, I think? Why?"
"I died in April," she replies softly, her voice choked as she looks down at her hands fisting themselves into her lap.
Gabriel, mistaking her sudden sadness with just coming to terms with the whole being dead thing, eases himself back down onto the rock, his expression sympathetic. "Listen, I know this must be hard-"
"I died trying to help Sam and Dean Winchester kill him," she interrupts, and when she lifts her sober gaze to meet his astonished one, her eyes are glassy with unshed tears.
"I was hurt and I wasn't going anywhere so I…I stayed behind to hold off a pack of hellhounds. I wanted to give them a head start so they could go put a bullet in that son of a bitch."
Gabriel stares at her in shocked silence.
She laughs but the sound was like a sob and her tears begin to flow freely, even though she tried to hold them in. "Guess they didn't make it," she breathes ruefully, plucking at a loose thread on the hem of her shirt, turning her head away.
There's a moment of silence before he reacts and when he does even he's a little stunned by the gentleness with which he approaches her. She's a tough kid, he can see that, but this whole thing was confusing enough for him let alone some poor girl the Winchesters had somehow talked into playing 'look over here!' with the Devil.
Gabriel slides down off the rock so he's sitting cross-legged on the ground across from her. He's close enough to reach out but he doesn't. He sits at a safe distance, like she's a rabid animal he's trying to keep calm.
"Last I saw them they were still alive." He tells her. An uncertain look crosses his face and he's forced to admit, "Alright, so they were kinda stuck between a rock and, well, Satan, but I'm sure they made it out. If you know Sam and Dean, you know they're like cockroaches…or Cher."
It doesn't elicit the slow smile he'd been hoping for, so he decides to stick with serious for now. He can do serious. He may have been a little out of practice, but he can do it.
"So," he says awkwardly, trying to be conversational because that seems to be the safest way to go, "you were helping Sam and Dean? You in the hunting business, then?"
Jo opens her mouth to tell him the usual story. 'No, my Dad was. I just help out.' But she stops. She's dead. Dead. There's no more life to live. She's never going to get to do anything more than what she's already done with her relatively short time on Earth.
"Yeah," she says. "Yeah, I was."
He nods. "I can see that. You seem like one of those tough, Buffy-type chicks. That's pretty cool," he offers brightly, wincing a little. What was that, all of ten seconds of seriousness? He really had a problem.
But that slow smile he'd been hoping for earlier blooms across her face. It's sweet and small and it feels like an accomplishment.
"Yeah," she agrees. "It was pretty cool."
They lapse into silence, just sitting quietly together for a while, until Jo digs her boot a little deeper in the grey dirt and softly asks, "So, what about you? Are you…dead?"
"I…think so," he slowly asserts. "I've never really been dead before so it's kinda hard to make a comparison."
"Is that even possible?" She asks. "Can archangels die?"
"Oh, sure. It's not the easiest thing in the world to pull off, but it's possible. Getting tagged by the Devil's probably a safe bet."
"And when you die, you come here? To Limbo, I mean."
Gabriel shakes his head.
"Nah, see, that's were things go a little fruit-loops," he says. "If you do manage to gank yourself an angel, they don't go to Heaven. That'd be a little redundant, right? I'm not too sure on the specifics, but we were always told that you go to the void."
"The void."
"Think…the absence of everything. The opposite of creation." He motions at the forest around them, "Basically this, but without all the fun scenery and consciousness of being."
"Sounds like fun."
"Oh yeah," he replies with deadpan seriousness. "It's a laugh a minute."
The truth is, the concept of the void has always sort of scared the crap out of him. If he was here instead of there, he wasn't too sure he wanted to go prodding at all the how's and why's of it. Sometimes you just say 'thank you' and forget it.
"So, if you're supposed to be in this void thing, how'd you end up…"
"No idea, remember?"
"Right."
"But I do know one thing," he says, offering her a small grin of sympathy. "Sweet little thing like you? You don't belong here. The power steering might be on the fritz, but I've still got enough mojo working to see inside your glowing little soul, Kid, and you're a snowflake."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Despite sounding vaguely complimentary, she isn't sure she likes the sound of that. For one thing, most people don't call girls with knife collections 'sweet.'
"You're a pure soul, Kid. One of the few I've seen in my vast, incredibly lengthy experience. Though, to be fair, my job's had me kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel most of the time."
"You can see inside my soul?" That thought kind of freaks her out a little.
"Sure," he chirps brightly, pointing at her middle. "Right there, deep inside, you're all lit up like a roman candle, Sugarplum."
"What else can you do?"
"I can whistle the 1812 Overture backwards," he boasts proudly, demonstrating by pursing his lips together and making some slurping noises. When he only receives an un-amused arch of her eyebrow, he grins broadly at her. "Nah, I'm just fucking with you."
"I meant some kind angel powers or something?"
"Of course I do," he replies, eyes glittering brightly. "You know Superman, Spiderman, Captain America? Those guys? Lightweights. Me? I'm a powerhouse of… well, power."
"If you're so powerful then why don't you just zap yourself out of here?"
"Already tried that," His happy expression twists in frustration. "Something's messing with my juice. Looks like I can't just snap myself outta this one."
"Back in the clearing earlier," she says with slow dawning realisation, "that's what you were trying to do? You just, what, snap your fingers and get whatever you want?"
"Yeah, basically," he confirms, wagging his eyebrows at her. "Cool, innit?"
Jo ignores Gabriel's obvious enthusiasm for himself. "But you can't do it now."
He snaps his fingers, as if testing it out. When nothing happens, he shrugs. "Guess not."
"And you're not worried about that at all?" she demands. "Don't you want answers? Don't you want to know why you're here?"
"Creampuff, I don't even know how here is here. This place isn't even supposed to exist anymore."
"It's not?"
"Limbo?" He scoffs, as if even the very notion of the place is absurd. "C'mon, that's strictly Old Testament material. Let's just say that when the revision notes for the world came down, this place was supposed to be liquidated. No more Limbo. A soul dies, it goes up or it goes down; do not pass go, do not collect two-hundred dollars."
"So, what, this place is like some kind of giant bureaucratic goof?"
"Heaven doesn't just make mistakes," he objects, shaking his head. "No. This? This is something else," he says with certainty. "Somebody did this."
"Yeah, well, don't you wanna know who?"
"Yeah, not really."
"How can you be like that?"
"News flash, Little Duck," he says sternly. "I went up against Lucifer and ended up like shish-kabob, but look at me now! I'm not in the void and that, as far as I'm concerned, is enough for me to call this one a win. Ever hear the phrase 'don't look a gift horse in the mouth'?"
"Yeah," she counters with jeering causticity, "and I know another one; 'beware of Greeks bearing gifts.' Guess what, that one has a horse, too." Jo shakes her head, "This feels like a trap."
Gabriel laughs with disbelief. "For who?"
"I don't know!" she shouts back, her hands clinching themselves into fists. "Maybe if you weren't completely useless we'd have some idea!"
There's a beat of silence and then Gabriel lets out a heavy sigh and reclines back on his arms, much like he'd done on the rock before. Only now he doesn't look like a relaxing sunbather, he looks tense and uncomfortable. It isn't a good look on him.
Jo forces herself to calm down, to take deep, slow, even breaths of unscented air as she loosens the knot of her fingers against her palms. Screaming at powerless archangels isn't going to help anything, even if it does make her feel just a little better for the split second she's doing it.
"I'm sorry," she offers with honest regret.
He casually waves away the apology, but there's none of the usual jocular mirth in his voice when he tells her, "Don't worry about it."
"No," she protests, shaking her head, "that was…That wasn't fair. I didn't mean…I'm just tired, I guess."
"Hey, death's no picnic, Kiddo," he admits. "Takes a little getting used to, I guess."
Jo nods slightly, sighing, "I just wish my mom was here."
She thinks over her words and something inside her tugs at her memory. "She could be," Jo announces after a quiet moment.
Gabriel doesn't follow. "Who could be what?"
"My mom," Jo says. "She could be here."
"Is she dead?"
"I…" Jo tries to think, tries to remember. "I dunno. I don't really remember what happened. She wanted to stay, I think."
She closes her eyes and tries to picture the store where she'd spent her last minutes alive. She tries to retrace everything that had happened.
"We rigged up this thing… This giant bomb. I was going to wait for the hellhounds to come inside and then blow us all to hell, but I… I couldn't move. I couldn't get up to open the doors and let them in and Mom…she stayed. She stayed with me. She said she wasn't going to leave me."
Jo reaches out, touching her right shoulder and she can almost feel the press of her mother's arm at her side, holding her.
"She put her arm around me. She told me that she loved me and then…" Jo shakes her head, tears stinging at her eyes again. "I tried to tell her that I loved her back but I… I was floating away. I don't know what happened after that. I don't even know if she's okay."
"Sorry to say it kid," Gabriel sighs, his tone sympathetic even if his words seem insensitive,"but I don't think your mom's chances were all that great."
"Yeah."
"Look on the bright side though," he points out, "that means she could be bumming around this place, same as us."
After a moment thinking about that, Jo shakes her head, wondering, "Do I totally suck for hoping that she's not?"
Gabriel cocks his head and makes a slow show of considering. "Well, not totally."
"If anyone deserves to go to heaven, it's my mom, but if she is here, I need to find her. Either way, we need find a way out of this place."
"Whoa, wait a minute there, Sunshine-"
"You said it yourself, I don't belong here."
"Yeah, but-"
"And neither do you," Jo adds. "So, are you going to help me or what?"
Gabriel leers at her with a mischievous smirk. "What's in it for me?"
Jo stares at him hard, offering, "I won't beat you until my hands go numb."
"Hmm," he considers. "As sexy as that sounds, I'm think I'm gonna to have to ask for a little more incentive."
"You know what," she says, suddenly standing in one smooth motion and turning as if to leave. "I don't even know why I'm asking you. I don't need your help."
"No, but you want it," he calls after her knowingly. His smile widens when she stops, her tense back turned to him but the slight tilt of her head telling him that she's at least still listening.
"Don't get me wrong," he says, coming to his feet and wandering over until he's standing at her back, practically talking in her ear, "You can do this all by yourself, but it sure would be nice to have some help, wouldn't it?"
She exhales in an irritated huff, "I'm not about to beg you or anything."
"No?"
"No. You'll either help me or you won't."
There's a long stretch of silence so heavy that Jo feels sure he's going to say no.
"Fine," he says, letting out a heavy sigh that blows through a few strands of her hair. "But I'm not in this to unmask the Scooby-Do villain, here. I'm only tagging along to help you play 'Are you my mother?' After that, we go our separate ways, Kid. Got it?"
"Trust me," she scoffs,"I'm more than okay with that."
Gabriel's hand descends over her head, giving her two quick, affectionate pats, like she's a damn dog or something. "We'll see."
Stepping back and out of her personal space, he claps his hands together and declares with a bright smile, "Well, shall we continue this little Bataan Death March to nowhere?"
"Depends," Jo replies, hiking up out of the valley they've been resting in, "do you think you can be quiet for more than five minutes so I don't end up killing you?"
"As if you could, Pumpkin," he scoffs, following after her, planting himself at her side and his hands at his hips. "And frankly, I'm a little insulted that you think I have so little self control. I can be quiet. You know I once infiltrated an entire legion of Han dynasty-"
"Gabriel."
"Yeah?"
"Quiet," she reminds.
"Okay, I'm done. Starting… Mmm, now."
They take all of twenty steps before he starts talking again.
"You know," he muses, "I strapped Masanobu Tsuji to a treadmill in Laos back in the '60s. Made it 72 miles on the incline before he cried 'Ojisan'…that's Japanese for 'uncle,' by the way." Gabriel shrugs but there's an edge of pride in his voice, "I thought it was pretty poetic."
"Who's Masanobu Tsuji?"
Gabriel grins tightly and shakes his head. "Just some dead guy."
Jo spends the next thirty minutes pondering that in blissful silence, after which Gabriel launches into a debate with himself on the merits of snickers versus mars bars and she starts daydreaming about taking off her right boot and strangling him with the laces. It's going to be a long day.
Gabriel is not a happy camper. His wings aren't completely clipped, he knows that much. He can still feel the subtle, unique hum of his Grace deep inside, steady and reassuring, letting him know that he's still a BAMF Angel of the Lord, bitches! He can still see the glowing, swirling light of his travelling companion's achingly pure soul, but he can't do much more than that.
There are any number of things that could make their little trek through this black-and-white photo world a hell of a lot more interesting and he can't do any of them. He can't read her mind, or snap his fingers and make candy appear. He can't zap himself to the end of this little story and live the thing backwards, just for the hell of it, and he can't twist and pull the fabric of reality around them to form something more to his liking. He's taken to randomly snapping his fingers together at odd intervals just to see if he's regained his abilities at any point, despite the fact that he would know the instant it happened.
Surprisingly, the worst part of it—not that he would ever admit it out loud or anything—is being completely cut off from heaven for the first time in…well, ever. Sure, he's been in witness protection for a few thousand years, but that doesn't mean he has stayed totally out of the loop about things going on upstairs.
Over the years he'd developed the habit of tapping into 'Angel Radio' now and again, just to stay up on current events and definitely not for some sappy reason like falling asleep to the sound of his stupid brothers' chatter, safe in the knowledge that they couldn't trace him back through it. He'd become used to the background noise, as steady and reassuring as the hum of his own Grace, and now there was just nothing. Nothing and, on top of it, no candy. Frankly, it sucked major flying angel dick and Josie needed to know.
"Have I mentioned this sucks."
"So you've said. A lot."
His assurance of quiet had flown out the proverbial window quite awhile ago. And, okay, so he had been updating her on the 'suck issue' with a fair amount of regularity over the course of the last thirty minutes, but he was a neutered archangel/power-depleted pagan god; it was his right to complain.
"Well, I like to get my point across," he grumbles.
"Trust me," she replies, swiping a lock of hair off her sweaty forehead, "mission accomplished."
"You know what I'd love right now? Some skittles," he sighs wistfully, "or m&ms." He snaps his fingers and nothing happens but he does make the pronouncement, "Skittles and m&ms!"
"Gross."
"You ever tried it?" he challenges. "It's like tasting a chocolate rainbow."
"Again, gross."
"Does that tree look familiar to you?"
Jo lets out a long-suffering groan, "Not this again."
"No, seriously, look at it." Gabriel jabs a finger in the direction of a large, leafy tree behind him that Jo thinks might be an oak. "I'm telling you, that's the same tree."
Jo squints a look at him that straddles the line between indulgence and contempt. "They all look the same."
"That's racist."
"It's a tree."
"That's arborist."
She starts thinking again about strangling him with her boot laces, but they've been hiking for hours and Jo can sort of understand why he'd think it's the same tree, so she's a little more forgiving. The scenery isn't all that astounding and is mostly confined to: big tree, small tree, big tree, small tree, bush, bush, bush, big tree, repeat. Plus there's the fact that it's all the same colour. She points all of this out to Gabriel who responds by flatly denying that any of those things are remotely relevant.
Gabriel has seen more trees than she can even imagine, and yes, after awhile they do all start to look the same, but then if you see enough of them they eventually all start to look unique again. "And this," he tells her with another firm jab at the tree behind him, "this towering bland monstrosity of grey leaves and bark is the same one we've been circling for the last thirty minutes."
"There's an easy way to solve this," she says, bending at the waist and fishing around in her boot. She pops back up with a knife.
"Whoa there, Wildcat!" He raises his hands in defence and backs away from her. The knife isn't very big or threatening by any stretch of the imagination, and it certainly won't kill him—it wouldn't even hurt all that much—but he's not about to put down 'getting stabbed...again' on his to-do list.
"Relax," she chastises, brushing past him and over to the tree. She raises her arm and begin to carve something into the bark, the dull edge of the blade etching out the lines of a large letter 'J'. When she's done she steps back to admire her work with a satisfied nod.
"There," she says. "Now we'll know if we pass it again."
She smiles over at him as if to say, 'happy now?' but he doesn't look happy. He looks like he's going through some serious sugar-withdrawal, frowning and irritable. Still he traipses after her, still keeping pace as they walk onward.
Despite his irritation Gabriel somehow manages to drag her into a discussion about, of all things, the 'Weekly World News'. This somehow devolves into a debate about the existence of extraterrestrials—Gabriel pro, Jo against, though Jo is pretty sure he's only pro to irritate her.
"Aliens did not build the pyramids!" she declares, laughing at his ridiculous assertion.
"How do you know?" he replies in all seriousness. "Were you there?"
"Were you?" She counters, realising only too late what a mistake she's made. "You're going to say you were, aren't you."
"As a matter of fact, yes, I was."
"And?" She prompts wearily, preparing herself for a big speech about how he was 'really busy that century' and 'wasn't paying much attention to a big game of Lincoln Logs in the desert' to which she would then respond by calling him a dirty, lying bastard. But he doesn't say any of those things. In fact, he doesn't say anything.
"Gabriel?"
She's met with tense silence. Jo looks over at him to see what the hell his problem is and she finds him distracted by something up ahead on their left. The quiet look of intense observation on his face unsettles her more than she's willing to admit.
"What is it?"
Suddenly he's beaming, practically vibrating with righteous joy as he bounds over to a tree… A tree with a large letter 'J' carved into the bark.
"Ha!" he cries, practically humping the base of the thing with all the frantic, happy adoration he expresses. "I told you. Didn't I tell you? It's the same tree."
Jo frowns, looking back over her shoulder at the way they'd come. "Maybe we got turned around when you made us stop?" she suggests, sounding like she's trying to convince herself. "We should go the other way."
"Or maybe we're going in circles," he replies, shoving his hands in his pockets.
"We should go the other way," she says again, distracted by the anxious feeling that's sinking low into her gut. She passes the tree, her boots snapping through twigs and crunching over dead leaves.
"Hold on," he calls after her.
She doesn't stop.
"I don't think this is gonna to work," he confides when he catches up, his pace more ambling and loose than her own stiff, determined gait. Yet, he somehow always manages to keep up. She has to wonder if it's an angel thing.
"We just got turned around," she says firmly. "It's not rocket science, we just go the other way."
So they go the other way. Ten minutes of walking later and the other way leads them to a big tree with a large letter 'J' carved into the bark.
"That's just stupid." Jo stares at the tree, shaking her head. "But we came from-" She looked back over her shoulder.
"Told ya." Gabriel smirks. "You gotta kick that linear thinking, kid. This ain't Kansas, it's Limbo. Physics aren't so much laws here as they are nifty suggestions."
"What do we do?"
"Nothing to do," he replies, easing himself down to sit beneath the tree. "We're stuck in a loop in the fabric of reality. We've just gotta wait it out. See if a rift appears or wait of the thing to right itself."
'Wait it out,' quickly turns into something of a game with the singular objective being entertainment. At least, that's the way it is for Gabriel.
Sometimes he walks with her on the endless, ten-minute loops around the the tree, chatting at her as she sighs and rolls her eyes and pretends like she isn't listening. Sometimes he sits a few loops out, watching as she passes by the tree like clockwork. Sometimes she sits out a few loops with him and they talk or he tries to make her laugh by playing 'Eye-Spy,' which was a game that takes on a whole new meaning when everything is the same colour.
After the first few loops she starts cutting notches into the tree every time she passes it, marking time. She calls it quits at twenty-two notches when it becomes boring and tedious and just a little depressing. After that Gabriel somehow convinces her to start marking time with expletives instead and the tree starts to look like a bathroom stall door at a seedy night club.
"Cock wrangler!" Gabriel calls up to her in helpful suggestion when she completes loop #36 and stops to carve into the tree he's sitting under.
She brushes his suggestion aside,"Too long," and begins to chip away at a small space of unsullied grey bark with her iron knife, spelling out 'CUMTWAT' in rough, spiky letters.
When she's finished Gabriel stands up to look at her work, brushing wood shavings from his jacket and grinning at her so hard that his dimples became like canyons. "Congratulations. Kid, you are my new favourite human."
Jo is trying to think up a suitably acerbic response when something in the bushes across the way catches her eye. It's just a quick flash of something bright and shiny in the leaves, like metal glinting off the sun. It's there one moment and gone the next. Probably nothing, she reasons despite the nagging feeling telling her it's not.
"Lemme see that thing," Gabriel says, reaching for the knife. "I wanna underline that baby."
Jo sees the thing from before glimmering in her peripheral vision as Gabriel is going for the knife. She reaches out, grabbing him by the sleeve and digging her short, blunt nails into his arm, halting his intention to grab the blade.
"Ah-how!" he cries dramatically. "What're you-" but he's cut off when she tightens her grip on his arm. In her other hand her fingers constrict like a vice around the handle of the knife.
Jo is only a little startled when Gabriel's other hand covers over hers, gently drawing her fingers off his sleeve. "Okay, I get it," he says, his voice soft and understanding. His lips suddenly quirk into an easy grin, "No touching Josie's knife. Got it."
He steps away, kicking his boot against the dirt as his grin turns cautious, like he's actually afraid she's going to turn the knife on him. "I'm just gonna go take a little walk," he announces. "Give you some time to cool down, kay?"
She replies with a dull nod. "Yeah, I think... That's a good idea."
Gabriel nods as he slides back onto the path they've worn down through the trees with their endless loops and, as he does, he tossed her a quick wink. "See ya soon."
When he's gone, Jo forces herself to relax and loosen her grip on the knife. She holds it lightly in her hand as she leans back against their mutilated tree and tries not to look at the bushes where she'd seen the glinting thing. For five awkward minutes she waits, not quite knowing what to do with herself, when suddenly a yelp of surprise echoes from within the bushes and their leaves began to shake violently.
Jo tightens her grip around her knife once again and, just as she does, a woman—tall, slender, with twisting curls of raven hair and wide eyes—stumbles out through the bushes. She's wearing a light canvas dress and, draped around her neck on a series of delicate chains, coins of various shapes and sizes shimmered in the light. Jo identifies the necklace as the source of the glinting thing she'd seen earlier.
The woman struggles as she emerges from the bushes and, as she clears the leaves and branches, Jo sees that she's being manhandled out into the open by a very amused Gabriel. As soon as the stranger's dust-covered sandals meet the path between the bushes and the tree at Jo's back, the woman twists out of Gabriel's arms and rounds on him, glaring.
"You tricked me!" she accuses, her voice a light, accented melody.
"Well, duuuh," Gabriel strings out with a laugh, gesturing at himself. "Trickster, remember?"
The woman just fumes, crossing her delicate arms across her ample chest and turning her eyes away from Gabriel, which only seems to make him brim with even more mirth.
"How ya been, anyway?" he inquires, tipping towards her slightly, a mischievous grin on his face. "Long time no see."
Jo, whose grip on the knife has refused to loosen, comes forward to join them on the path, looking back and forth between the two.
Gabriel, who was still smirking up a storm, has yet to look away from the woman. Conversely, she apparently will look anywhere except for at Gabriel.
"You two know each other?" Judging by their body language and Gabriel's previous comment, it's more of a request for confirmation than a blind shot in the dark.
"Josie," Gabriel announces, grinning like Christmas as he motions to their willowy guest, "meet Persephone." He reverses the introduction, "Seph, Josie."
The woman in question lets out a huff and rolls her eyes but says nothing, as if humouring Gabriel is an unpleasant but necessary chore.
"Persephone is Mistress of the Underworld," Gabriel informs Jo, "and my lovely ex-girlfriend."
End Note 2: Biographical note, as promised. So, for those who care, Masanobu Tsuji was a pretty heinous Colonel in the Japanese Imperial Army in World War Two. He ordered and participated in a number of terrible atrocities, including the infamous Bataan Death March, but after an Allied victory he was never tried for war crimes because he was recruited by the American intelligence community. He worked for them for awhile before disappearing in Laos in the 1960s. I just felt like he was the type of person that would attract someone like the Trickster to take righteous vengeance and, because part of this story will deal with Gabriel/Loki's background a little, I thought I'd start to bring it in here as a bit of foreshadowing. Why? Because I like to be writing-ninja like that. Though, because I was pretty esoteric and heavy-handed with it, and now that I've told you about it, it kind of ruins the effect. So very not-ninja of me. I'll try to do better next time. Stay tuned!
End Note: Dun, dun, dun! Hey, Supernatural opened the door to the whole pagan-gods thing, I'm just walking through. Sorry if this chapter ended a little oddly but I didn't really know how to finish it without it being super-crazy long. The next chapter will pick up pretty much where we leave off here.
