...
...Ch4
...
"A Trickster?"
Mary looked over to where her cousin was on the phone with Sam. Something tickled in the recesses of her mind; a half forgotten bedtime story about angels masquerading on earth.
"No, I don't know anything about that," Ben continued, typing at his laptop. "What about you Mary?" But when the transgenic looked over, she had already flown away.
...
When Mary is fifteen, she sits in the auditorium of Camp Chippewa and listens as Sheriff Jody Mills carefully explains about all the things which can happen to an unprepared woman, and all the mechanical knowledge needed to avoid such a fate.
Later that afternoon, Deanna takes her daughter aside and re-explains the facts of life, with careful notes and notations more suited to her specific circumstances.
"Now, I know gender doesn't mean much to your Daddy's side of the family, but humans take it a bit more seriously. So make sure you always ask what pronoun someone wants you to call them, otherwise it can get awkward."
The hunter chuckled. "Speaking of dicks with wings, if you do hook up with an angel, remember that consent is sexy. And by that I mean that the angel and the poor person they're in should be on board before you try anything."
That evening, Mary consulted her father on his opinion of the day's topic.
His feathers rustled sympathetically. "As you know, angels have a word for the exchange of genetic information and creation of progeny. What your mother an I do is not that."
Two of his sets of eyes closed in remembered rapture. "A human cannot feel more than the physical mechanics of what occurs, but neither you nor your brother would have been conceived if that was all which went on. Human souls continually surprise me with their resiliency. Love just...reaches out, wanting to create a new life."
Blue eyes harshly focused on green. "Be careful not to force your grace upon them if you ever take a human partner. It is an invasion, and shall not be condoned. An angelic partner...it is much like doing battle. Communing grace is exhilarating, but the mechanics are very similar to overwhelming an opponent's being to smite them. Rarely is it recommended to tie yourself so closely to one not of your choir. We also do not have the instinct to procreate. So while flirtations may sometimes be for play or provocative, they are always for pleasure."
Mary cringed as her father detailed the varied and disturbing sex lives of multidimensional wavelengths of celestial intent. There were lots of tentacles involved.
...
She found Gabriel having internet trolls be forces to live under bridges in a town so tiny, his true form could have knocked it over with a misplaced feather.
Gliding through the non-planar dimensions, she swooped low to pluck at his fur in greeting.
The less human head snapped at her heels in response, but she was already out of its reach, perched on a pair of his antlers. The elk head snorted, but didn't shake her off.
"You should be more careful," the messenger intoned, vocal wavelengths humming pleasantly through the base of Mary's wings and soul.
"Why? Would you have bitten me?"
Golden pupiled multitudes rolled to fix upon her. "You don't want to test me, kid."
"I wouldn't think an archangel would notice even if I did," she replied coyly.
His eyes slanted away. "Well you're not wrong."
Mary smirked and dug her blunted claws into the closest perch. The being beneath her lunged out, but she had already darted away. Canine noses huffed, and beaks clacked as he lumbered smoothly in pursuit.
The nephilim slowed her flight somewhere in an empty patch of prairie, allowing her pursuer to catch her in his intentionally slow grab.
Long fingers with more joints than humanly accustomed caged her tiny form in a single palm, unwrinkled and reflecting gold like obsidian.
Her feathers rustled against the grace formed bars, all green eyes focused on her captor.
The archangel's hand, one of the many not acting as a cage, trailed down her top left wing, fingers curling with incremental pressure around the joint, as if contemplating the easy twist needed to rip the appendage off.
Mary whimpered deep in her throat, clutching her perch on his palm tightly.
"See, you are afraid of me," he said, releasing her from his entrapping fingers.
"I never said I wasn't," she panted. "Though, grabbing a girl's wing like that, I admit the emotions are getting a bit mixed. Next time, just pull on my pigtail, ok?"
"You're a cheeky little thing, aren't you."
She grinned widely, wings flaring in display. "Runs in the family."
Leaping from his palm, the nephilim swooped around the galaxies large being, skimming over the feathered sea as if they were miles of grass punctuated by irises. The space between his wing joints echoed like canyons, and she crowed out a pleura of song just to hear the sound come back to her. The canyons rustled.
"Quit it," the messenger said, eyes glaring from where they watched her around every crevice.
"Make me!" she sang, and the feathers shuddered again.
"Seriously, don't make me get the fly swatter out."
Mary darted in and around his horns, which cascaded like a forest. "Oh, I think I would at least warrant a double copy of Life Magazine."
The landscape bucked, losing coherency as it slipped past the physical realm into pure light. A supernova baked and burned in blinding white, with Mary less than an electron at its very heart.
Sound waves swirled through the wisps of her wings, braiding the ribbons of grace into tickling knots of rainbows.
She laughed, unable to disentangle her soul from the remembered reactions of her body.
Gabriel twisted around her, eyes flaring plasma. "Not so much fun when you're on the receiving end, is it?"
"Why?" Mary spluttered through her mirth. "Is this what I was doing to you? I didn't know you were so ticklish!" Her laughter bounced around the archangel's grace, striking long silent chords to ring like bells.
The archangel trembled. "You don't know what you do to me, little girl."
Claws tugged at the human tangle of her being, loosening threads as if pulling free a dense ball of twine. Mary gasped and shuddered, coming completely undone.
Her perceptions stuttered, and she blinked all of her eyes furiously, as the field in the middle of nowhere America came into focus around her.
Gabriel's vessel stood several feet away, hands tucked in jeans pockets, golden eyes piercing.
In six long strides, she crowded into his personal space, face pressing close to his.
He stepped back.
"You're cute," the archangel said, his tone heavy with understatement. "But you don't want this."
"Yes I do," Mary stated.
"Kid, you have no idea-"
"What, that heaven will smite me if we're seen together?" She canted her hips to the side, fist balanced just above her belt loop. "They'll do that to me just for existing in this universe, and back home everyone thinks you've been dead for ages."
His posture stiffened, muscles along his back tightening. In another plane, miles of wing and feather flared, ready to attack. "You have no idea what you're getting into. Do you know why the archangels never intermingled with the lower choirs? It's because if we got to close our grace would overwhelm them, and, if they were lucky, they survived. Imagine blowing a kiss, and you burn someone's wings black."
One stalk forward, and his nose was barely a breadth from her own. "I'm a nucleur bomb, sweetie, and you're a flickering christmas light. This isn't going to end well for one of us."
"And why do I believe you think that one is you?" She could feel her lips brush against his as she spoke.
He kissed her, hands tangling in her dark hair, aura flaring to scorch as it escaped his mental confinements. Mary gasped into his mouth, clutching at the front of his green coat, while the edges of her wings burned.
The archangel pulled back, eyes flaring gold. "Don't bother me again, kid."
He vanished in a flutter of sound.
Mary stood alone in an empty field, physically and spiritually frustrated. She carded her fingers through her feathers, trying not to saver the echoes of gold which simmered along her wings's edges, as she put the mussed wavelengths back to rights.
A shuddering breath ripped into her lungs, followed swiftly by another, and another, until she was a gasping wreck.
It started raining.
What a pathetic syntax.
...
Mary stood shivering on the doorstep, face leaking sorrow from every orifice. "Grandpa Cain?" she sniffed. "Can-can I come ih-in for some- some tea, please?"
The greying man looked down at the trembling figure, brows unsure whether they should furrow in confusion or raise in surprise. They settled on a neutral gaze, as he opened the door wider to let the angelic being in.
She sat on his chintz couch, watching the beehive buzz away in the living room.
Cain handed her a steaming cup, which she gratefully took between her hands, but didn't drink.
He settled back into the armchair across from her. "So, mind telling me who you are?"
The young woman sniffed. "I'm your...lots of greats granddaughter, from a parallel universe."
The father of murder tilted his head. "Excuse me, I don't mean to be rude, but you don't look demonic enough to be related to me."
"It's a l-long story," she sniveled, utterly miserable.
Cain sighed. "You can explain over a pot of tea.
...
...A/N:
Not much. Uh, yes there is the potential for romantic feelings between gabriel and mary, just of the angelic variety, which is very very different from the human variety. Gabriel doesn't want to accidentally kill her, because archangel grace is like a very strong base: potent and it burns down to the bone.
Big time skip to next chapter, but only because I'm hand waving the cannon that happened and not caring where it went
