I had a random idea, unless Londo has found water wings I can't blame this one on him, I would love to though. Regardless, random ideas assaulted me and I ran with it all.

Chapter Eight.

Gabriel is beginning to lose his patience with Castiel, not that this is any big surprise really. From his last encounter with the angel, the former archangel had believed that he would be easily tempted and easily intimidated. Turns out he may have been wrong.

As it stands, he cannot believe how lucky he has been with Lucifer's unknowing cooperation in the whole thing, approaching Castiel and making him the very offer that has allowed Gabriel to start manipulating him, and then continuing to approach the falling angel to renew the offer for purposes of his own that Gabriel does not understand and never wants to for that matter either.

That Michael has taken it into his head to start interfering now could be a problem, of course it could also work out quite nicely in the grand scheme of things. Naturally, Michael's more aggressive interest in Dean is a concern for the archangel, in that in interferes with his plans as far as Castiel and Sam are concerned, but in another way, he thinks that maybe it will help to forward them.

Michael has been both tardy and premature in his approaching of Dean, Gabriel thinks, the grief Dean feels at the death of his friends is not fresh enough and he has the people he holds most dear as close to him as he can get them. That is one thing that Gabriel is certain of, Dean is fond of Castiel, very fond of him. The archangel has been hiding on Earth for a long time, he knows how to recognise the depths of a person's emotions, even when said person has not even admitted it to themselves.

As for Castiel, well, the angel has never truly experienced such intense emotions before, has never been in the position to and so Gabriel knows that he will not be sure how to react to them. In a way, the key that Lucifer provided has proved far more useful to the archangel than he ever believed it would and given the dark and tarnished state of Castiel's grace, manipulating him has been easy, far easier than Gabriel had anticipated. The state of the falling angel's grace has also made it easier to locate him, the only discordant, isolated, note in a chorus that Gabriel has not heard in too many centuries.

Gabriel has spent so many years in his disguise as a trickster god that he knows how to bend and manipulate. For countless decades he has meted out justice and punishment to those who society will not, to those guilty of a hubris that would put Lucifer and Michael to shame. This is not justice, not in the traditional sense, and nor is it punishment, but the basic principle of it is the same. To manipulate and twist reality so that only a grain of truth remains where the illusion unfolds and all of this effort is going into isolating Sam, isolating Dean, isolating Castiel. Without the Winchesters, Castiel will fold and crumble under the pressure and without Sam and his angel, Dean will lose his main focus for staying in control of himself.

Gabriel has no interest in ensuring that a future such as the one that Zachariah showed Dean comes to pass, and he is certainly inquisitive enough to have taken a peek at it, he does not want Dean still oozing defiance in the face of Lucifer while the rest of the host have abandoned the Earth, he most certainly does not want Castiel half passed out from substance abuse most the time. What he needs is the three of them on their own.

Sam will be the easiest to drive away, he thinks, using the darker, more obsessive, part of his younger brother to push the taller hunter out of Dean's life. After that, Dean will be next, simply through the exposure of Sam's acquiescence to Lucifer due to Castiel's actions. Gabriel has been encountering the Winchester brothers, and many of their ilk, for a long time, he knows that such behaviour will not be tolerated by Dean, even in one that the hunter loves. The only stumbling block that Gabriel has come across is that of Castiel's apparent need to resist temptation.

It is very annoying.

It is not like Gabriel has not been giving them both a lot to work with, he knows that Dean has an active imagination when it comes to these sorts of things, but there is never any harm in giving the slower Winchester a little bit of a nudge. He already had the fantasies, Gabriel just made them a little bit more prominent in his memory. As for Castiel, well, there his brother is infuriatingly innocent. Were it not for the tantalising snippet that Lucifer treated the angel to almost six weeks ago, Gabriel would have nothing to really work with aside from the feelings that Castiel is too inexperienced to identify.

Point of the matter is, he all but threw Castiel into the bathroom with Dean this morning so that rather than hitting the angel with a two by four, and it is remarkably tempting to do just that right now, he could simply chuck everything in his face. Instead, little brother goes into a state of exaggerated denial and Dean gets angry. If he were not an angel, an immortal, it would be giving him a headache.

When Castiel finally senses his presence, and really he must be losing his control of his grace more rapidly than Gabriel thought if it has taken him this long, the archangel is munching absently on a candy bar of indeterminate make, he long ago learnt that so long as it was a sweet snack that he nibbled on, the illusion of the trickester god would be maintained. It has become a habit now and one that he has little interest in breaking. Besides, the sugar serves as a sort of reward for not running screaming into the universe at the kind of pornographic images he has been forced to endure whilst perusing the head of both hunter and younger brother.

The lesser angel's eyes narrow when he sees his brother, it gives Gabriel a sense of simulated happiness that even though his last encounter with the angel ended in a rather humiliating fashion, he still makes Castiel wary. Gabriel leans casually against the tree behind him, part of him is revelling in being known for what he truly is and being able to be himself around his younger brother, another part fears that Castiel will expose the truth to his superiors. In a way, this is just another method of getting the slipped angel out of his way.

"Why are you here?" Castiel asks and Gabriel shrugs, continuing to watch him through shrewd eyes that see far too much. Castiel looks worn, tired and desperate and for some reason that does not evoke the pride in his work that Gabriel has expected, instead it makes him feel like something of a bastard. It makes him feel no better than Michael or Lucifer, each playing everyone else off against the rest and watching as the world slowly implodes. This was his Father's most perfect creation and all that the rest of them are doing, angel, demon and human combined, is destroying it and each other.

The realisation brings to mind an answer to the question he has been asking since he brought himself into this form of witness protection, the question of why his Father left. He could not stand to see his creations destroying one another. It changes nothing. He has a goal and he is going to stick with it.

"I heard you'd been looking for me," he smirks, takes the final bite of the candy bar into his mouth and chews slowly as he feels Castiel's gaze on his mouth, watching the archangel chew and swallow with a measure of curiosity. "You should try it," Gabriel mutters, "you might find you like it." Somehow, the archangel knows that the one in the taller vessel is aware that he is not just referring to the chocolate.

Artemis