He did it again. He knew it was a bad idea, actually it had always been a bad idea, but it was just one of the things that happened sooner or later, if you were immortal and had nothing to do. Long story short, after leaving the Starbucks, the Trickster decided to drown unwanted memories in music, like any sane person would have done.
And then like any sane person he wanted to loop a great song, but was too lazy to reach for his not-really-stolen MP3-Player, because a nightstand can be incredibly far away, when listening to music. So since he couldn´t loop the song without moving, he looped time instead. And lost track.
Staggering out of the hotel a little dizzy, the Trickster reminds himself once again that solving the song dilemma via time loops is a bad idea. Music can be like drugs as he has amply experienced over the centuries and hearing the same song again and again for hours can be worse then getting stoned.
This time it was especially stupid. By the time he had finally gotten tired of the song and his brain was also functioning enough to monitor his body again, he actually moved to chose a new song and was absolutely confused when the old song started to play again three minutes later. It took him three very confusing and pretty embarrassing loops to figure out
A) that he was stuck in a time loop
B) that this wasn´t some kind of prank or attack, because
C) he had created the time loop himself and most importantly
D) how the fuck to get out of your own time loop again
It was like temporarily forgetting how to walk while being drunk and he never wants to feel that helpless confusion again. Seriously, music can be worse than getting stoned or drunk. Or doing both at the same time.
Not like he gets drunk easily these days. Sometimes the thing he regrets most about having been Loki is developing an almost complete resistance to alcohol. It´s absolutely impossible not to drink while hanging out with Norse Gods and they really don´t know when to stop, so the options narrow down to becoming resistant or dying in a drinking contest with Odin. Or feeling like dying at least.
Looking around the Trickster finds himself in this strange time-loop-and/or-pocket-universe jet lag, that gets him way too often. Bending time is all fun and games, but getting back to real time can be a pain in the ass. He´s still in London and it´s only midday, even though he has drowned himself in music for days.
Less then twenty-four hours since seeing Michael.
From the perspective of Michael and other boring people who live time in order anyway.
Gabriel tries to imagine Michael playing with time, but fails. Heavens oldest is way too straightforward, too stiff for that. Or was at least. It shocks him every time again how long it is since he has last seen his brothers. He really has no idea who Michael is now.
And Michael has no idea who he is.
At that point the thoughts go to deep again and the Trickster takes over. Has to take over. It´s better like this. It´s better to run than to risk everything.
So he silences the voice that tells him that it´s not to late, urges him to go back to that street in Wyoming, or maybe just knock at heavens door and drop by or whatever. It´s the same voice that wanted to go back after the Loki disaster. The voice that will never get, that it´s over and has been over for a very long time. That door has been closed for ages and he slammed it shut himself.
So he runs and doesn´t think about heaven and Michael, trying to have the time of his life.
Like always.
It´s the second day after he thought to see Michael and he is back in the US. He doesn´t even know why he gravitates there over and over again, but some part of him (the annoying one) is pretty sure it has to do with running again. Not so long ago, the US were a refuge for people that didn´t belong, somewhere they could vanish to and start a new life without too many rules ruining everything.
He actually took a ship from England to America once back in the early days of the US, just to feel the excitement of the people grow, see how the all smiled in the end, despite the long journey, despite them having no idea of how the future looked like for them. The weeks on the ship were stinky and crappy and crowded, but he wasn´t even tempted to just zap away. Not once.
He is getting nostalgic again, but he can´t allow Gabriel to break through once more, so he just goes along with it. The Trickster can be nostalgic too after all. About the Wild West for example. The Wild West was great. Well, if you knew how to behave.
Not so much if you are a guy from the 21th century, who has blabbed entirely too much about how everything was better when men were still allowed to be real men, next to a Trickster. Shame. The guy provides good entertainment though. The Trickster lets him get away with most things for a few hours, then looses interest and decides the most educational way to get him out of the pocket universe again, is via hanging. The guy doesn´t take it very well. Shame again.
Still, he probably learned his lesson, or some lesson at least and the Trickster is looking forward to a long evening with the saloon girls. Why abandon a perfectly good pocket universe immediately when you can still have some private fun? Sometimes illusions work just fine.
It´s the third day after he spotted Michael and he is crashing parties all over the world. If the people react to it good humored, he joins them for a while and then searches for the next party. If not… well they had their nightmare coming. Hospitality to strangers is an important value which should be taught to everyone.
When it gets too boring, he raises the stakes. Keeping illusions that are far from each other upright over a long time is pretty darn difficult, but you can make a great game out of it. His record is crashing five parties simultaneously. But today he can´t really concentrate. The nostalgia is back and threatening to become more serious than just a little bit Wild West. In the few quite moments he accidentally has, the road keeps appearing in his head over and over again. He sees Michael standing there, starring at him and then just vanishing, out of reach once again. He knows that he is the one who ran, but somehow it always seems to be Michael, who is leaving him.
So he glosses over it. Is the Trickster with all his heart, dances, shouts and sings out of key, makes stupid jokes and drinks more than any human being could possibly take. He talks to people and can´t remember their faces five minutes later. It doesn´t matter. All that matters is to get that voice, that voice that was so suspiciously quiet yesterday and sounds so much like Michael, to shut up. Binge drinking is hard work, if you are an angel, even more when you are an ex Norse god. It´s not impossible though. Almost complete resistance doesn´t mean complete resistance.
Sometimes he really hates the Trickster.
It´s the fourth day after he saw Michael and he is barely able to move. Somehow he is still able to feel entirely too much pain though, although he has of course crushed his vessel a long time ago, which is a pity, because he actually liked the soul of his current vessel. He even told him the truth about running away and Loki and the other thing and the guy just laughed and said "Come on in, crazy angel" Way better than religious people. Way better.
He spends the day rolling in self pity, eating candy and watching crappy television, including entirely too much episodes of Dr. Sexy. He doesn´t even like this crap, but he can´t seem to stop and can´t see the point of pushing himself to do anything that could remotely be defined as usefull.
So, more episodes. More candy. More pillows. More coffee. More headache pills.
Some small, traitorous part of him doesn´t think of last nights tour as a good idea anymore. Some even smaller, even more traitorous part wishes that there were someone to take care of him. He thinks about that time when he was very young, miscalculated a flight that was only meant to get attention his brothers attention and broke a wing. He still remembers the pain with shocking clarity, his own screams ringing in his ears, the way Michael held him, tried to comfort him, helped him through these terrible moments, until Father could finally deign himself to come and heal him.
It was the first time that he experienced real pain and Michael was there for him and helped him through it. He is way too sure that no one will be there to help him through the last time he will experience real pain.
That thought is way too depressing.
More candy. More pillows. More Dr. Sexy. You can´t be sad snuggled into a blanket, eating candy and watching television. It would be against the rules of creation somehow.
It´s the fifth day after he had that little starring contest with Michael and he is still miserable, but all the real candy ran out some hours ago and he needs to get some new or go crazy with illusions that just aren´t the same. So candy shopping tour it is.
A long time ago he used to gift himself holidays. Just tell himself that now was his holiday and then go candy shopping for the whole day, or just lay down at the beach and do nothing, something like that. He stopped after he realized he lives every day like a holiday and if they are all you have, holidays just aren´t fun anymore.
Candy stores have to belong to his favorite places of all time. He is still excited like a child every single time, trying to snatch as much sweet sins as possible without actually having to pay for them. Not that he ever really got into money.
He takes a job now and then, something easy where he can cheat with angel mojo, just to be around the same people for some time and he still has savings from these jobs, but stealing or illusions are just as easy. Today he actually pays, only snatching a few Twizzlers for good measure. Stealing candy in a candy store is absolutely required and it helps keeping him distracted.
Before seeing the two little boys he hasn´t thought about Michael all day.
They are maybe four and six years old and the mother very clearly doesn´t agree with their opinion on how much candy is necessary, which sends the younger one into a crying fit. The Trickster is beginning to think about how he can get the boys their candy and teach the mother a lesson at the same time, preferably without traumatizing the boys, when the older one carefully slips away to come back with what seems to be his little brothers favorite chocolate in his pocket. He just shows it to his brother for a moment, then shoves it back into his jacket with a big grin, but the little one gets it at once and his face splits into a happy grin. Isn´t it nice to have someone trying to make you happy, even if that means breaking the rules?
A long time ago the Trickster used to gift himself holidays, but an even longer time ago, his brothers used to gift him holidays.
"Holiday for you", Raphael would say and then they would fly together all day and Raphael would never tell Gabriel to shut up, no matter how much he chattered.
"Holiday for you", Lucifer would say and they would sneak down to earth together, do all the forbidden, exciting stuff and never turn each other in.
"Holiday for you", Michael would say and Gabriel, the most vivid of the archangels, always running around, never able to hold still, would suddenly calm down and crawl into his brothers arms, the safest place in all of creation. He would lie there for hours, just listen to Michael talking, maybe reading to him and feeling as safe as one can be.
A road flashes in front of him, a vessel, a brother that has haunted him all week. Now he even makes him flee candy stores.
It´s the sixth day after he met Michael and the Trickster has lost the fight. Gabriel is very much alive and kicking and he is absolutely miserable. Keeping the Trickster upright has been near impossible all week, just a quick solution doomed to fail. Now Gabriel has finally given in to his thoughts, settling himself on some lonely mountain top where no one ever goes, to avoid potentially annoying human beings, while thinking (he is almost sure that the no-one-ever-goes-there-part is because the mountain is holy and climbing it means desecration, but hey, nothing like being desecrated by an angel and if the local god minds, he can damn well come and tell him that himself)
Gabriel is past trips down memory lane. He is past denial and self pity, at least concerning this one incident. He is just reliving the moment over and over again, trying to remember in every detail, how Michael felt like, how it felt to see his brother after all this time.
It must have been even harder for Michael he thinks. He is not proud of what he did to his brothers back then, it seemed appropriate at the moment, but so many things do and they never are. Maybe that is the biggest lie he has kept upright for so long. How much he wanted his brothers to search for him, while ensuring by all means that they never would.
He has never seen his dead body that first time. It was stupid of course, paying for something without seeing it, but then he has been stupid back then. Maybe still is, because he can´t stop hoping that the illusion he bought wasn´t perfect, even though it had to be; that Michael had doubts from the beginning and is searching for him right now.
He wants to be found.
He wants to run.
He wants his brothers.
He wants to be alone.
He loves Michael.
He hates Michael.
He sees the road. Over and over again.
He wishes he would have stayed.
He is glad that he ran.
He keeps seeing the road.
And he can´t take it anymore.
It´s the seventh day after he met his brother and he is standing on the road in not-even-God-knows-where Wyoming, shouting for his brother. The road is dark and empty, no human being for miles and miles and no angel anywhere. He doesn´t know what he has expected. Angels? Michael? Why would Michael stay here? Why would he send anyone? Michael thinks he is dead, because that is what Gabriel wanted him to think. He probably thought seeing Gabriel just had to do with the hell gate standing open. Why would he still be there after a week?
After Gabriel wasted a whole week.
And there he is now. Standing on his side of the road, looking over to where Michael stood. Unable to look away, even though he knows no one will come. Feeling more betrayed than he has any right to feel.
Without knowing why he lets his vessel sink into the damp, polluted grass by the road side, starring up to the stars, feeling unable to ever get up again.
Maybe he is the one getting tricked, he muses. Maybe Michael was just an illusion from hell. Alright, convincing him of that illusion would take almost Lucifer-like levels of power, which would mean basically the same problem in green, but maybe with the hell gate standing open…
The explanation isn´t convincing at all. He knows what he saw. He knows it was Michael.
So he just stays there, lying in the grass, watching the stars, waiting for eternity to pass.
All alone.