Author's Note:

So, true to my word I didn't make you all wait six months for another update. Yay! More good news is that this chapter was actually much, much longer but I chopped in half to make two chapters, which means another update isn't too far away!

I also want to thank everyone who took the time to post a review for this story. I really appreciate the feedback and letting me know that people are actually reading and enjoying this thing has kept me writing, so thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you! Once again I'm exposition!girl here but we should be moving forward again shortly.

Chapter Six

The Story of Us

"Perhaps it's impossible to wear an identity without becoming what you pretend to be." – Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

"Through others we become ourselves." – Lev S. Vygotsky

Exhaustion was a novel experience for Gabriel, like begrudgingly picking up a foreign language through daily exposure, the heavy weary feeling dragging at him at the end of each day, making his shoulders slump and his eyes water. The only plus he could see from the whole thing was yawning which was, in his opinion, like a tidy little orgasm, the feeling crawling up the back of his neck before cresting over him like a wave, breath escaping in a rush as all of his muscle contracted and then released, settling him in a sleepy, satisfied afterglow.

He was mid-yawn when he felt it, a jolt of emotion shot through his and Jo's hands were they were entwined on the bed, the force of it making his toes curl against the soles of his shoes like he was being electrocuted.

"What the-"

He gasped as he was slapped face-first into a torrent of feeling that was so familiar he had to check to make sure he hadn't somehow projected the emotions onto Jo only to have them reflected back at him. But no, the feelings weren't exactly his. Well, they were but they weren't.

"Oh," he said aloud, a memory presenting itself in his mind. It was a little like shuffling through a deck of playing cards and stumbling across a card from a different deck.

The new memory was a little hazy with age, but he could still get the gist of it. He stood with a motionless Jo in the hallway of some unfamiliar house and he was reaching out to touch her hand. It was a moment of time, a connection bridging the gap, and suddenly he knew exactly where it was Jo had been all this time, and he knew that he'd been there too, but that was a long, long time ago.

In the memory Gabriel could feel the prod of interest tinged with a nascent possessiveness towards Jo which he could sympathize with, but which needed to be stymied.

Not yet, he sent out through the connection, cautioning patience whilst knowing he was asking a great thing of his counterpart by doing so. Send her back, he insisted. She belongs here.

For a moment he was sure that he was going to receive a refusal and lose Jo all because of his own petty selfishness, but then bullish reluctance gave way to acceptance and then something else. An intense cord of Loki's curiosity, stronger as it had been back then, pulsed at him like the shine of a familiar lighthouse. It thrilled along his own amazement for a moment, the two emotions twinning with recognition, before snapping away and fading like an echo.

Loki let go.

He watched as the liquid beaded above him, the shining green drop glistening in the dying daylight, straining against the great serpent's white tooth. The snake was long dead, its body a lifeless husk pinned to the rocky shelf above him, but its venom was still potent, still raining fat droplets of burning acid down over his head with vicious regularity. His throat was raw from calling for his wife who had wondered off ages ago to empty the bowl she'd been using to catch the venom. He knew, deep down, she wouldn't be returning.

"SIGYN!" He cried, his voice now a hoarse imitation of what it once had been when he'd used it to mock and jeer and goad the other gods into imprisoning him here like this. He didn't even bother to struggle against his bindings now as the sticky entrails of his slaughtered son had hardened into iron bands that cut into his flesh with every gasping breath.

The sun had almost crept its way out of the sky when the light appeared, more bright and beautiful than anything he had ever seen. It brought tears to his eyes and the pace of his heart quickened as the light grew brighter and brighter until he felt as if he almost could not endure another moment of the exquisite joy its presence inspired.

And then the light spoke to him in a voice so dulcet and commanding that he strained against his bonds so that he might be closer to it.

Loki, the light said. I am Gabriel.

The Trickster strained to see through the light, to catch sight of this Gabriel who spoke so sweetly, but through the light there was just more light and on and on like the unending fire of the sun. In all his many years he had never encountered such a being.

He struggled to speak and when he did his own voice sounded so rough and offensive when compared to that of the light. "What are you?"

I am an Angel, said the light. And I am here to free you if that is your wish.

Loki's mind stumbled over the unfamiliar word. "What is an Angel?"

An Angel is a servant of God.

"Which god?"

Loki had known all sorts of gods; old gods and new gods, kind gods and wrathful gods, petty gods and generous gods, weak gods and strong gods. He wondered what sort of god would be served by such a being as this Angel. Surly no god of his pantheon for he knew them all and their inclinations and not a one of their petty, fault-ridden ilk could command something this powerful and pure.

The God, the light insisted. The only God there is, was, and ever shall be. The Creator. The Author of all that you know and all you shall ever know.

"I do not understand," the Trickster confessed.

You will.

"So you have come to free me?"

In a manner of speaking.

Loki, a clever being capable of weaving traps with words, recognized the parsing of that phrase. "You would kill me?"

No, affirmed the Angel. That is not my intention. In fact, your wellbeing is very much my concern. No, Loki, my dear Trickster, I intend to see that you live for a very long time, indeed.

"But why would you help me?"

There was a silent moment and Loki had a feeling that the Angel was choosing its words carefully. When it finally spoke, words that should have been threatening were matter-of-fact, almost regretful. Everything comes at a price.

"And what is your price, Angel?"

The answer came in a simple syllable that road the winds.

You.

The world smelled like clean sheets and ozone. This was the first thing she registered as she drifted through the hazy veil of unconsciousness, feeling detached and separate from he own body and then, like a cord snapping taught, she was solid and whole again, her skin tingling at the acute sensation of sheets enfolding her.

Jo opened her eyes only to snap them shut again against a blinding white light. Groaning, she tried to move her hands up to her face to shield it from the brightness, but founds she could only move her right hand, the left remaining incapacitated and uncooperative on the bed. Suddenly the blinding whiteness faded to a more tolerable level and something warm and heavy moved across the palm of her lame left hand.

Eyes watering, she blinked a few times until she could finally adjust to the remaining light, rolling her head against the pillow to look over to the left, trying to see the heavy warm thing that was keeping her hand pinned to the bed. As it happened the thing in possession of her hand turned out to be another hand and her eyes followed a path from the appendage up to a hair-dusted forearm that was attached to a broad shoulder, which in turn led up to a face.

Gabriel's face.

Body bent over the edge of the bed, his head rested on the blanket beside her leg, face turned up towards hers as if he'd been watching her sleep before drifting off himself. His eyes were closed and his expression was more calm and serious than she'd ever seen it, save perhaps for when they'd been on the beach and he'd carefully carved a line into her hand with her own blade. He looked so much younger in sleep, and yet older at the same time.

No, he didn't look younger exactly. He looked open and sinless. She found it made her feel both closer to him and further away.

It fascinated her, watching him being this still and quiet, but it also scared her for reasons she couldn't quite figure. Maybe it was the insinuation of timelessness that clung to him when he was like this, as if he could outlast empires and oceans in his sleep? What made it that much more unsettling was the fact that he probably could.

Maybe it was the way her free hand twitched as if it wanted to reach out and touch him, to run her fingers through his hair and brush away a few of the gold-brown strands that had fallen across his forehead. His skin looked as smooth as polished marble and she kept thinking about what it would feel like to skim her hand over the angular curve of his jaw where days-old stubble was beginning show.

It was no easy task abandoning her study of him for the sake of glancing around the unfamiliar room they were inhabiting, taking in the Spartan décor of antique furnishings and wispy white drapery that swayed in response to the breeze whispering through the open window by the door. The fresh air circulated with the heavy, stale antiseptic smell she always associated with hospitals and morgues. It was the smell more than anything that set her on edge.

In that moment she wanted nothing more than for Gabriel to wake up, to be with her, to talk and joke and take nothing serious.

Gently, she squeezed his hand in hers and he stirred a little, letting out a vaguely annoyed sound, like the kind a kid would make when being prodded awake by his mother on a school day. She squeezed again, harder this time.

"Ngggggh," he moaned and tried to burrow his head beneath her thigh.

"Gabr'el," Jo whispered hoarsely, her throat like sandpaper.

"Mmm," he answered sluggishly, still half-asleep, "Mmyeah?"

There was pause, a long moment where nothing happened and she could actually feel him turning things over in his head. She could also feel it when he put things together and not just because his head snapped up, the sudden movement sending ripples of vibration through the bed springs.

Gabriel's eyes meet hers and stared in wonder. Jo stared back, transfixed by the color. It felt as if this were first time she had ever seen his eyes, really seen them. Without the dull gray she'd almost gotten used to, his eyes were the color of honey with flecks of gold radiating out from the iris. Beautiful and ethereal and everything an angel's eyes should be.

She made herself stop obsessing about her friend's eye color and decided that it was about time she get some answers about what was going on. She ordered all the things she wanted to know in her mind, numbering them 1 through 20 and then began with the first order of business.

"Wha happened?" she asked roughly, her voice breaking.

"You were gone for a while," he explained, carefully extracting his hand from hers and she felt a rush of longing for the contact but she didn't know if it belonged to her or to him. "Welcome back, by the way."

"Was I…" Jo's brow furrowed and she cleared her throat again. "The Titanic, it sank…right?"

"Like a rock."

"Yeah, I thought so. I had the weirdest dream," said Jo. "I think you were in it."

"Oh?" he exclaimed with surprised delight, his eyebrows arching up to his hairline, musing, "And what exactly were we doing in this dream of yours? Hopefully it was something dirty and untoward. I'm always at my best with dirty and untoward."

"Don't be disgusting."

"Whatever you say, Princess," he grinned broadly.

Gabriel could tell through the bond that she wasn't as disgusted as she liked to pretend. He was relieved that her time away hadn't seemed to damage the connection; her shining soul swirled before his eyes, the spark of his Grace visibly pulsing in time with the rest that was inside him. She was still easy to read.

"Tell me about your dream," he asked, because he could feel her thinking about it.

"It was crazy and so…real," Jo professed. "I was still alive and living out in California with these people, my friends I guess, and you were there I think but…but I didn't know who you were. It was like I just...forgot you."

"Not likely," he scoffed, preening for effect. "I'm pretty unforgettable."

"Seriously," she said, quiet and intense. "Were you there?"

"I've been here the whole time," he hedged unconvincingly.

Jo's stomach did a somersault. "What aren't you telling me?"

"Nothing."

She winced, her stomach clinching. "Okay, stop lying before I throw up."

"I'm not-" Jo's glare was fierce. "Okay, alright. I was there…sort of."

"Sort of?" she echoed, incredulous. "So all of that, it was real?"

"I guess," he shrugged. "I don't really remember a whole lot. It was a long, long time ago and I wasn't…all there back then."

"What do you mean, you don't remember? Aren't you the guy who insisted on telling me, in minute gory detail, all about the quote-unquote 'forgotten fifth sacking of Rome'? For God's sake, you're an Archange-"

"Whoa, whoa, hey," he cut in quickly, eyes darting around the room like he expected someone to pop out from behind the drapes and shout 'Surprise!'. "Let's just be careful using words like that around here."

"What? Why?" She cast a wary look towards all the unfamiliar, functional antique furnishings around the room. "Where are we, anyway?"

"The Settlement," he replied blandly. "And let me tell you, it ain't all it's cracked up to be."

"Bad?"

"Boring," he corrected. "It's like living in ye olde timey village of the damned. Everyone here's just so…happy. It's creepy."

"Doesn't sound so bad," said Jo.

After what they'd gone through just to get here 'boring' and 'content' actually sounded kind of nice. But poor Gabriel, she thought. Knowing him he was probably climbing the walls in this place. By now she'd spent enough time with him to know that much. She thought back to the out-and-out glee he'd shown in the alternate timeline when he'd admitted the temptation to cause mischief by showing himself to her was just too much to contain.

Speaking of which, "Stop trying to distract me," she admonished. "What'd you mean you don't remember?"

He rolled his eyes. He should've known she wouldn't be put off for long. Damn hunters! They were actually a lot like vicious little hellhounds when they wanted something; they'd bite down and refuse to let go until they got it.

"I wasn't exactly at my best," he said. "I was kind of going through some stuff. Finding myself, I guess you could say."

She laughed, "What? Gabriel: the College years?"

Gabriel sighed, "Okay, let me start back at the beginning…"

Have you decided?

Loki sat down heavy on the despised rock, careful to avoid the serpent's dripping venom. He had since given up the luxury of pacing through the dirt after having spent so long chained down on the rock and was now chewing over the Angel's offer.

Gabriel had freed him so that he could make this decision without duress and he had used the time, nearly six months of solitude on this spit of land amid the great ocean, to think his options over. Nearly six month had passed since the Angel had left, stating that Loki should think over his decision without Gabriel unduly influencing him, but now the Angel was back and wanted his answer.

"I have questions," Loki practically warned.

Of course, replied the Angel, sounding amused. You may ask me anything.

"If I say no," the Trickster began, rushing to assure, "not that I am, but if I do, will you leave me how you found me?"

He almost couldn't bear the thought of returning to how things were before, bound to that rock, the venom dripping down on him in ceaseless burning torture.

No, answered Gabriel. But I also cannot allow you to leave this place. You committed a crime and interfering with your imprisonment is not my place.

"But is that not what you are offering?" he reasoned. "Would accepting not interfere with my imprisonment, as you say?"

If you were to accept your crimes would be irrelevant.

Loki frowned darkly, "Because I would not be me anymore."

Because you would be more than you, Gabriel corrected.

"Why?" Loki asked for what felt like the thousandth time. "Why are you offering me this?"

Because I cannot go home and I cannot stay here without your help.

"You can't go home?"

I cannot watch my family destroy itself anymore. I cannot stand by and endure my brothers' fighting.

"I can't go home because I cause fighting," Loki laughed.

So here we are, two outcasts, Gabriel remarked, his mirth clear.

In the ensuing silence Loki nodded in thought. "I suppose you want your answer then?"

The Angel's patient silence indicated that he was listening.

Loki ran his fingers down over the twisted iron bands the Angel had wrenched him free of six months ago, felt the cool metal beneath his fingertips and sighed. His wife was gone, his children were dead, and his fellow gods had banished him until Ragnarock; there was nothing left for him on this path.

Suddenly this complicated matter seemed very simple and such a thing required a simple answer.

Loki opened his mouth and, low and behold, a "yes" tumbled out.

"Wait, so, you're two people," Jo summarized for herself. "Gabriel and Loki."

"Like peanut butter and chocolate; great separate, better together."

"So what, it's like…" she struggled to think of a correlation to this very odd circumstance, "Like having multiple personalities or something?"

"Not really. It's more like, well, there's really nothing like it, but I guess you could say it's like having a patchwork quilt for a brain. Some of the patches are Loki, some of 'em are Gabriel and the whole thing put together is me."

"Sound's confusing."

"Yeah, it was for a while," he admitted. "I kinda even had a mini mental breakdown for a while there, but that was back in the Dark Ages so I don't think anybody really noticed."

"And now?"

"One Angel, under God, indivisible," he recited. "Every once in a while there'll be something that pulls me in half though, makes Loki feel one way and Gabriel another, but that happens to everybody. They've even got a fancy five-dollar word for it 's called 'cognitive dissonance'."

Jo mouth the term silently to herself a few times.

"My dissonance just happens to be a little more literal than other peoples'," he added wryly.

"I know what you mean."

"Yeah?"

"You know that place where we were? That… whatever you wanna call it?"

"Alternate timeline," he supplied helpfully.

Jo nodded, momentarily distracted by a memory from her dream that, as it turned out, wasn't a dream at all. In it Gabriel was slowly saying the words to her one by one, like she was a child. Alternate. Time. Line.

She shook her head a little as if it were an etch-a-sketch she could clear with a few simple motions. "Yeah, that," she confirmed. "Well now it's like I've got these two separate sets of memories now, the real ones and the dream ones…only the dream ones feel just as real as the real ones."

"Sure, why not."

She gave him a stern look for his flippancy. "For instance," she continued, "my Step-Dad. I never had one…only I did. After my dad died my mom never remarried…except that I can remember her marrying Bobby when I was twelve. I remember being at the wedding, moving to South Dakota… I remember loving Bobby like a father but then I think about it and he's also just this grouchy old guy Sam and Dean run with sometimes."

"That's fucked up."

"Tell me about it. And then there's you."

"Me? What'd I do?"

"You came to visit me and then made me forget that you were ever there."

Gabriel tried to remember that far back, tried to cut through the thick hazy fog that shrouded his memories of the early days just after Gabriel and Loki had fused together. A single memory materialized out of the haze, the edges visible if not its finer details.

"Atropos didn't want me talking to you directly, I think," he recounted. "Lemme tell ya, she was pissed. That I do remember."

"Atropos?"

"Yeah, the Fate that kidnapped your soul for a while so you could lean on Sam and Dean and nudge 'em in the right direction," he said. "Now that I'm really thinking about it I can remember it all a little more."

Which was true. The memories were coming a little easier now, like a whatever had been blocking them had moved an inch or two, letting a few more slip through the cracks and into the forefront of his mind.

"She was ticked because someone de-sunk the Titanic and created a bunch of new souls that weren't supposed to be around. She was going around bumping them off but that wasn't fixing the bigger problem , so she got you to do her dirty work and get the message through to our two favorite emotionally co-dependent hunters, knew they'd do the right thing and sacrifice for the greater good and blah, blah, blabbity-blah."

"Why didn't she just tell them? Or, better yet, get you… or past you, to do it? Why involve me?"

He shrugged. "Dunno. Guess it needed to come from someone they'd trust. Atty must've known I wasn't the guy for that. Not only was I supposed to be dead—and not even a Fate can fix that—but after dicking them around like I did I'm not really their favorite person. I mean, sure, in the end I did 'em a solid and whatnot. I even left 'em a really nice parting gift, but something tells me that I'm the last guy they'd listen to if I went running to them with something like that."

"Why, what'd you do?"

"Well, the first time I met them I made Dean fight some seriously talented strippers I created while I had Sam and their drunken parental stand in-"

"Bobby?" she said sharply. "My Stepdad?"

"Right, yeah," he grimaced, "Sorry about that. Any who, I sorta sent a chainsaw-wielding giant after them."

"What?"

"What, what? They were there to kill me! And I was only there doing my job, making the unrighteous pay for their unrighteousness," he reasoned. "They could've just left me alone. I wasn't hurting anyone...who didn't deserve it. But no, they went and stabbed me with a tree! I'm chalking that one up to self-defense!"

"And what about the other times?"

"What makes you think there were other times?"

"Because you said there were other times."

"Did I?"

"Gabriel-"

"Fine! All right, so I might've trapped Sam in a groundhog-day loop where I kept making Dean die over and over and over and over again. But c'mon, that was just funny."

"Bet Sam didn't think so."

"Well, no, but I was teaching him a lesson about being too dependent on Dean."

"Yeah?" Jo scoffed. "How'd that that one go?"

"Kinda blew up in my face a little bit." He frowned, muttering, "Probably should've seen that one coming."

"And that's it? That's all you did?"

"Yep," he answered, before amending reluctantly, "Well, expect for that last time, but I don't think we should count that."

"Why?"

"I was under a lot of stress," he argued. "I thought I had to make them accept their cosmic roles as Michael and Lucifer's human Halloween costumes." He shook his head, dejectedly adding, "I just wanted it all over, so sue me."

She regarded him quietly for a moment, considering the deep ocean of hurt that always seemed to want to drag her under whenever he brought up one of his brothers.

"Must've been hard, being in the middle of that fight."

He let out a bitter, humorless laugh. "You have no idea."

Only she did in a way. She could feel his sorrow like the slow burn of a thousand lit matches lying beneath her skin.

"They weren't always like that, you know," he said, "Michael and Lucifer? They were just my big brothers. They taught me everything, made time for me when Dad was too busy constructing the universe. I mean, the four of us, we were the first anything, so, you know, we were close."

"I was an only child," Jo shrugged. "But back there, where Bobby was my Stepdad, I spent a lot of time with Sam and Dean when I was a kid, seeing how John dropped them on us every chance he could get. They're pretty much the closest thing I have to brothers. I can't imagine them being in a fight like that and me having to choose a side."

"Face it, you'd pick Dean," he said knowingly.

She blushed a little at the insinuation but just shook her head. "Maybe before, but now? I don't know. I mean, Dean was a lot older so Sam and I got stuck with each other a lot. We learned to ride our bikes together; he took me to my first movie… He even taught me how to whistle."

"You learned to ride bikes together? Isn't he, like, five years older than you?"

Gabriel had always been a little baffled by the way humans tracked and guarded their precious years like a bunch of chronologically-minded accountants, but he was pretty sure that both Winchester were at least half a decade older than Jo.

"He got a late start."

"Guess so."

"It's a little crazy," she said, "remembering my life one way and then all of the sudden there're all these new memories stuck in, y'know."

"Yeah, I kinda do," he grinned, tapping a finger to his head. "Thinking for two, remember?"

Jo grinned and patted his arm. "Guess we've got that in common."

"Guess so," he smiled back.

"So, how'd you get mixed up with this Atropos chick anyway?"

"How do I get mixed up in anything?" he remarked wryly. "Just trying to have a little fun."

He flexed his fingers, then his toes, tried to get used to the sensation of having both of those appendages, tried to get used to the flesh and bone that now encased him in sturdy, solid warmth. Tricksters, he now knew, always ran a little hot compared to other beings like humans.

Well, the voice inside his head—or was it the other way around?—said expectantly. What do you think?

"It's strange," he answered aloud, he voice sounding strange now that he had ears to hear it.

Agreed, the voice replied. Are you moving my- our toes or am I? I can't tell.

"There is no distinction. There is no you and there is no me," he said. "Now there's only us."

Then how am I still here? I am still here, aren't I?

"Of course," he agreed. "You are here just as I am, our personalities haven't yet converged. There may be some initial confusion but this will change in time. Soon we will be united, but for now we are still too new."

More strangeness to look forward to then?

"Indeed."

There was a soft popping sound he recognized as the harbinger of a deity's appearance and the sound was followed by a wry voice that said, "Talking to yourself now Loki? Oh how the mighty have fallen."

He turned towards the voice and there stood a dour blonde woman in odd clothing.

Gabriel's request for the woman's identity was met with a flood of information. Her name was Atropos and she was a Greek Fate. She was dressed strangely because she traveled through timelines, running around snipping the threads of peoples' lives. She was not to be trusted.

"Hello Atropos," he greeted shortly. "Still as undesirable as ever, I see."

"Loki. Still causing trouble as always," she smirked back, her cold blue eyes assessing him almost clinically over her glasses.

"Well, I do try."

"How would you like to succeed?"

A laugh bubbled up out of Loki and he shook a chastising finger at her. "That sounds suspiciously like an offer, Atty."

"Good, because it is."

Tread carefully here, he told himself.

"What kind of offer are we talking about?"

Atropos shrugged a shoulder. "Nothing too terribly taxing. A little influencing of humans, some light manipulation and few other duties as assigned."

He was about to tell her she could go shove her scissors somewhere very unpleasant when, coyly, she added, "Oh, and did I mention this little job involves time travel? Say… fourteen thousand years down the road of your very own timeline?"

Nowthat was interesting. Both Loki and Gabriel had the ability to travel anywhere they chose to in time but things got a hell of a lot trickier when it came to surfing your own timeline. There were all sorts of cosmic shit-storms that came with trying to get a peek at your own future, but there were no rules against letting someone else show you.

"And why come to me?"

The Fate smiled like she was in pain. "You're a Trickster and I'm in need of a little trickery."

"Why not go to Anansi or Puck or Coyote?"

"Because this requires more finesse than those bumbling fools are capable of providing."

"I've been accused of a lot of things in my time," he smirked, "finesse usually isn't one of them."

"Are you interested or not?" she snapped. "I need an answer."

"Well, isn't that the popular phrase of the day," Loki mused.

"Pardon?"

"Nothing," he replied. "Never mind."

"So? Are you in?"

Gabriel gave a mental shrug of indifference that said he would leave this decision entirely up to Loki. The Trickster knew he should be cautious, but the allure of the Fate's offer was just too enticing.

"All right," Loki declared. "Yes. Let's go have some fun."