Author's Note: Welcome to chapter two. I'd just like to thank XSilverLiningsX and Boundless Hearts for reviewing along with everyone who read the last chapter. You guys rock!
Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Legion.
Chapter Two Red Cross
Gabriel blinked when the light hit his eyes, earning a sharp gasp from Jack.
"Uh," the boy made an indistinct noise in the back of his throat. "I didn't think…I didn't think you'd be awake." Carefully, he lifted a knapsack off his shoulder and placed it on the ground. "Actually, I thought you'd be dead."
Gabriel watched Jack, not entirely wary, but impressed by the child's courage. Despite having lived for millennia, having seen the blackest reaches of man's depravity and the stunning, golden heights of his triumphs, he still found himself surprised by human nature. It was an indefinable thing. Fluid. Ever-changing. And even he, who knew something of the inner heart, who knew of the workings of the soul and the mind, would not have guessed this boy to be so brave. This wretched little human child.
And Jack was indeed little. Scrawny, really. Although Gabriel had a hard time judging human age, he guessed the boy to be only a few years over his first decade. Young and foolish.
Or young and headstrong, he told himself,\. Gabriel remembered how insistent Jack's female friend had been about him avoiding the wounded angel. Insistent to the point of violence, almost.
Gabriel wondered where the miserable woman was now. She could not have possibly left the boy. For despite her threats, despite her rage and utter ugliness of tone, there had been some sense of love in her words when she spoke to Jack. Love and overwhelming concern.
She might die for this child, he realized. She might die for this little creature.
Not so long ago, he thought Michael might do the same for him, but now the mere thought made grief snatch at his heart.
Gabriel lowered his eyes and forced himself to concentrate on the physical pain instead. It was easier to pin down. Easier to endure. Something that could be understood and controlled, unlike the roiling torment that tore at his spirit every time he thought of his brother's betrayal.
Jack, of course, was oblivious to Gabriel's aimless ruminations. He crouched by his knapsack, pushing back the sleeves of his blue parka, his arms pale and skinny like chicken bones.
"Sorry it has to be like this," he said in a high, fast voice. A voice fueled by excitement and more than a little abject terror. "I wanted to take you back to my Gram's house, or what used to be my Gram's house. She's dead now. But Max could've found a place for you to stay, if she really wanted to." He grunted the last words. "Technically, I'm not supposed to be out here, but…you know." The boy shrugged and unzipped his bag, pulling out a white plastic case with a red cross on it.
Gabriel's eyes widened in recognition. The red cross. Oh, how many times he had seen it before. On the shields of the knights who falsely went to war in God's name. On a small pin worn by a nurse named Clara Barton during the Spanish-American War. On similar bags and cases carried by ambulances to car crashes, where young life was needlessly cut short and children lay with their broken faces pressed against deployed airbags.
Jack struggled with the clasp on the case, his hands trembling. "It's cold out here," he whispered, his breath appropriately cloudy. "You must be freezing, you don't have a jacket."
His eyes trailed to angel's bare arms and Gabriel was surprised to find abundant sympathy lurking just below the surface. Michael himself had reflected such sympathy, had radiated with it. Sympathy was the reason why his brother had fought so hard for humanity. Fought and died.
Fought and died.
He thought of Michael then, and wondered if he was watching over them, a guardian to both human and celestial being on this forsaken night. Would he be pleased to see his brother tended to? Would he even care at all?
That last thought, that last, dreadful insinuation was unnecessary and Gabriel knew it. He shut his eyes in shame, earning another small gasp from Jack.
"Hey! Hey, are you okay?"
For the first time, Gabriel thought of speaking to the boy. But then he realized he had nothing to say. Absolutely nothing worth the breath needed to push the words passed his lips.
Instead, he watched as Jack searched through his case, pulling out gauze and a box of band aids and some white medical tape.
"I think this is it," he said at last, lifting a packet of sutures out into the direct beam of the flashlight. "Yeah, this is definitely it." The fear had returned to his voice again. And the fear was a child's.
For some reason, Gabriel thought of the infant that he had been sent to kill and something of sadness welled up within him.
Poor, innocent children. Children meant to be cradled lovingly in an angel's arms, not murdered.
Once more, he focused on the pain.
Jack sniffed, rubbed his nose on the sleeve of his parka and looked up at the sky.
Gabriel was tempted to follow his gaze, but was feeling somewhat disinclined to appreciate the glory of the heavens at the moment. Instead, he stared at the low, stunted shrubs that lined the gully, noticing how the wind pulled faintly at their branches.
Jack was clearly hesitating now, sitting back on his heels and offering the Archangel a deep frown.
"It looks like you're hurt pretty bad," he said, lifting up the flashlight and directing its beam at Gabriel's torso. "Is it your stomach? I see some blood, but it's all dried up. Your armor…or whatever it is, makes it difficult to tell. I guess I could-"
Jack bit his lip, tucking the flashlight under his arm. "Okay, I'm gonna have a look, but I have to take your armor off first. Please don't…just don't move or anything."
He inched forward, hands outstretched, the knuckles looking like tiny marbles under white flesh. Gabriel wondered if he had the strength to grab the boy's wrists and capture them in his unforgiving grip.
But that would be cruel. Cruel and unnecessary. And for all Gabriel's dedication to duty, for all his practiced stoicism honed by the ages, for all his indifference to the fate of mankind, he did not want to hurt this child. There was no need, no reason for him to grab the thin wrists and snap them like brittle twigs. No need to cause fear and pain. He had not been ordered to harm this boy, this shivering and pathetic little creature. Though, in truth, Gabriel did not know what his orders stood for anymore, when blind obedience was disregarded in favor of betrayal.
A hard, uncomfortable lump worked its way into his throat and Gabriel burned with regret. Regret and unspent sorrow. And as Jack's hands drew closer, he kept still, giving way to apathy, as deadly as any sin, as fatal as the wound to his stomach.
Jack glanced at the angel's face once before he touched him, as if assuring himself that he and this strange being had an unspoken agreement.
"Don't move," the boy whispered, "please don't move."
His fingers found one of the buckles holding Gabriel's breastplate to his pauldrons. After a moment of fumbling, he released the first buckle and then the second, pulling the heavy breastplate away with a grunt.
"Ugh," Jack emitted a faint moan of disgust as Gabriel's bloodied torso came into full view.
The Archangel braced himself as the cold air, borne by a stiff wind, hit the ragged flesh around the wound. Out of pure instinct, he clenched his jaw.
Jack noticed the movement. "Did that hurt?" he asked. "I'm sorry. I'm tried to be careful."
Gabriel struggled to remain still, his vision blurring. Fresh blood welled up against his under-tunic, making the light fabric stick to his flesh. The wound was only half-exposed, with the jagged edges of his torn garment concealing the full length of it.
Jack made a gagging sound. "I have to…I have to lift up your shirt. Hold on." He stuck the flashlight between his teeth, his jaw extending grotesquely. "No moving please," he mumbled against it.
Gabriel steeled himself as the boy's fingers peeled back the fabric. Again, the wound smarted as the cold air hit it, the hot blood emitting a faint trail of steam.
"All right." Jack seemed decisive now. He pulled the flashlight out of his mouth and balanced it on the ground so that the beam hit the long gash. "I'm not gonna lie, I've never done anything like this before. But it's just sewing, right? Maybe I should've joined the Boy Scouts, huh? Maybe I should have-"
But he fell silent when he opened the pack of sutures, the needle and black thread spilling out in a sinister tangle onto his lap.
The boy tried hard. The boy tried so very hard. Gabriel knew the sewing was uneven, he could feel the large gaps between the stitches, could feel Jack's tiny fingers quivering as he drove the needle through the skin and pulled it out the other side.
For a good while, the child was silent, the only sign of his disgust coming when he turned away to retch.
"They make this look easier on House," he said after a time, wiping his crimson stained fingers on his jeans. "It's not neat or anything, but I'll put some antiseptic on it and some gauze. I wish that Max was here, she'd be able to do this. She's a cop, you know. I don't know if they teach this sort of stuff at the police academy, but she can do CPR."
By now, Gabriel's head was resting on one of his wings, his eyes feeling heavy. The stitches Jack had put into his stomach would not effectively stop the bleeding and he knew it wouldn't be long now before his soul escaped his body, returning to Heaven to be restored as Michael's had after their fight in the diner.
But Jack had tried. He had snuck away in the middle of the night, spending a good hour in the frigid night air, where the wind tunneled down through the gully and howled and where an Archangel lay bleeding into the dirt.
As the boy reached for the gauze, Gabriel forced his head upright once more, his eyes suddenly clearing.
"Thank you," he said.
Jack dropped the gauze. "Oh my God."
But his words were lost to the sound of tires crunching over gravel. Two lights (entirely earthly, Gabriel noted with some disappointment) crested the lip of the gully, casting both angel and boy into sharp relief. From somewhere up above, a car door opened and then slammed shut.
The woman, Gabriel thought. Of course.
Jack scrambled to his feet, kicking his flashlight and sending it careening out of sight. Bits of black thread were stuck to his pants and his hands were still dyed with blood. He looked about wildly, quite literally caught in the headlights as he tried to gather up his plastic case.
"Jack! Jack!" The woman stood on the embankment and her voice, so raw and terrified, brought Gabriel back from the threshold of unconsciousness. "Jack, where are you?"
She scrambled down into the gully, slipping and sliding on the rocks, her black jacket open and flapping in the wind. "Jack! Jack!"
"Max," Jack sounded less enthusiastic. Quickly, he stepped in-between the woman and Gabriel. "Max, I'm-"
But the woman was wild, her expression that of lioness who has lost a cub. There was danger in her eyes, mixed with blessed relief.
Max reached out and grabbed Jack by the hood of his parka, shaking him mercilessly. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"I didn't-"
"I told you, Jack! I told you!" She released him, causing the boy to pitch back and into the dry wall of the gully. Little pebbles rained down on his head.
"Max, I'm sorry," he bleated, holding up his bloodied hands. "I'm so sorry."
But then the ferocity was gone from the woman's face, only to be replaced with worry. It rose up in her eyes, a perfect phantom, molding her lips and eating away at the hollow places in her cheeks.
"You're hurt," she breathed.
Jack looked at his hands, quite astonished to notice the gore on them. "Oh." His mouth dropped open. "No, I'm fine. It's from him, Max. I was trying to…" he trailed off, shame making him mute.
And for the first time, Max looked at Gabriel.
He met the woman's stare readily, his head propped up in the crook of his wing.
Try, human, he thought, even as the last of his already drained strength began to desert him. Try.
Max's eyes quickly left Gabriel's face, her expression becoming narrow and tight. It was hard for any human, no matter how dulled by the trappings of their world, to hold the gaze of an angel for long.
"You used our medical supplies on it," she said. "We only have that one first aid kit and you've already used up a packet of sutures."
"He was going to die." Jack stepped forward, the eager rebel once more. His messy brown hair waved like grass in the wind. "He was going to-"
"It's dying. Look at it, Jack. Can barely hold its head straight."
"He," Jack corrected angrily. "Don't call him 'it'."
"Please-"
"He can talk, you know."
This surprised the woman. Her eyebrows jumped upwards, darting beneath her unkempt bangs. "It spoke to you?"
"He. He said thank you, Max. He thanked me for helping him." Jack hunched his shoulders, still defiant, his chin tucked inside the high collar of his parka. "I couldn't leave him out here to die, Max. It was wrong and you know it. You never leave people behind to-"
"Stop!" The woman threw up her hand, the sudden movement revealing something silver hanging about her neck.
Gabriel blinked, his eyesight fading. For a moment, he thought she was wearing a Saint Michael medal.
How appropriate.
And a small part of him, a tiny, insignificant part hoped that his brother was watching now. Watching him become a plaything for humans.
"We have to take him back to Gram's house," Jack was saying, insisting really.
"Are you out of your mind?" Max stepped away and Gabriel noticed her hand drop near her waist.
"You can't just let him die." Jack was standing in front of the woman. "You can't just-"
"Jack, get out of the way."
"What? What are you going to do?"
"Get in the car now."
"No!" The boy screamed. "I won't-"
But he was cut off as Max thrust him to the side, her gun reappearing from out of its hostler.
Jack realized what was happening before Gabriel did. "Don't!" he cried and the desperation in his voice was enough to make the Archangel stir.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, beyond the pain and away from the numbing reaches of blood loss, he registered danger.
With all his might, Gabriel pushed back against the rock, willing his legs to support his weight, praying that his wings would catch the wind and lift him to the heavens.
But as he moved, as he struggled and fought to stand, Jack's poor stitching failed. The sutures snapped open with a snarl. His wound bleed freely and fiercely, dousing his flank.
"Get down!" he heard Max shout.
The world was fast falling black, falling away, away. And Gabriel was alone in the blackness.
Abandoned.
And from somewhere in the dark, a shot rang out.
Author's Note: Thanks so much for stopping by! If you have a free minute, please leave a review. I cherish all feedback. The next chapter is in the works and should be posted sometime next week. Until then, take care and be well!