Chapter 1

Master of Fate

To be fair, it never should have happened. Not that they knew the truth about it. They being the Winchesters and Company, and it being the thing that happened. But it hasn't happened yet. It won't happen until they're at each other's throats and can't seem to be able to trust one another.

And it all started on that beautiful fall day. It was perfectly reasonable to not suspect a thing – after all, why would one expect of such when in Disney World? The angels and humans had more or less split up for their own bouts of 'family time'. Dean had practically dragged Sam and Mary over to Splash Mountain while Gabriel took Lucifer and Castiel to the actual castle in the middle of the park.

"Come on, Cassie! At least look like you're excited by all of this," Gabriel exclaimed as he guided them upwards to the top of the castle. "It's every kid's dream to come here!"

"I suppose it is rather nice place. However, I don't understand why they call this the Magic Kingdom when there isn't any magic," Castiel responded in typical Castiel fashion.

"I'm having a bit of trouble understanding that, too," Lucifer muttered under his breath.

Gabriel just shot a halfhearted glare at both of them before stopping in front of the open balcony. Rushing towards the balustrade railing, the youngest archangel gestured out to all of the people milling about below. "Can't you feel the children's joy— the way their souls all shine brighter here from the sheer excitement— how the parents' souls resonate with their children's happiness? The whole place is like a beacon of love and hope and a bunch of other cheesy but happy emotions!"

"I can feel it, little brother, but that doesn't mean I understand it," Lucifer responded dryly, crossing his arms as he stood next to the left of his brother.

The youngest archangel shot a pleading glance to the other angel present. Surely Castiel would have some insight to what he was saying… But, no, Castiel only gazed at the crowds of people in the park. Gabriel's list of convincing reasons for Disney World being awesome took a blow, and he faltered slightly. Still, that didn't keep him from continuing his effort.

"Look," he started with an edge of exasperation in his voice. "Right over there under that stuff from Tangled— you know, the lanterns and purple flags? Yeah, there. See the little girl with her mom?"

Lucifer turned his gaze to where Gabriel was directing him. The older archangel found the little girl Gabriel mentioned before his brother was even finished with his question. Lucifer also instantly recognized the little girl. After all, Lucilia Bennett was technically the reason why he and Gabriel had been so adamant that they all go to Disney World in the first place.

"—time of her life… Are you even listening to a word I'm saying?" Gabriel huffed, crossing his arms when he noticed that Lucifer was zoning out on him.

Lucifer blinked, shooting a glance over at Gabriel. "Of course, why wouldn't I be?" he asked innocently, if perhaps a touch too innocently.

Gabriel glared at his older brother and then continued with his exposition.

Lucifer paid attention – really, he did. But he was also focused on the girl, who was entirely oblivious to the archangel watching her.

Lucilia had changed since he'd last seen her personally. Sure, Lucifer had been involved with moving Gabriel Bennett's little sister and mother to their relatives' home, but he hadn't actually been there for the transition. From what he could see, she was doing well. Her soul – along with many of the others here – was indeed bright, and hers stood out from the rest.

But that might have been because of his time looking at her through Gabriel Bennett's eyes. The boy held his little sister in such a high regard that Lucifer found it hard to not place her in a similar light – especially now that Gabriel was Gabriel. The boy had captured Lucifer's heart, and the youngest archangel helped it grow.

While Lucifer still couldn't care less for the human race, he was finding that some weren't as bad as he had taken them to be. It probably didn't help that Gabriel had pretty much spoiled him with some of their inventions like the Internet and TV and ice cream and chocolate.

Still, there were all kinds of reasons Lucifer could come up with to hate on the humans... But nowadays, he just didn't bother to come up with those reasons. And he was trying to be a bit optimistic and give the human race the benefit of the doubt for Gabriel's sake.

"Stop staring. You'll make Cassie suspicious," Gabriel's voice boomed in his head.

It was small, minuscule – only a slight tensing of his form – but Lucifer jumped at the interruption of his thoughts. He sent a subtle glare Gabriel's way, and he got a 'you deserved that' smirk in return.

"And that's why the Magic Kingdom is magical," Gabriel said aloud in conclusion to what Lucifer could only assume was a long and detailed elaboration on his original statement.

Castiel was about to respond, probably something in refutation of one of Gabriel's points, when both Lucifer and Gabriel's attention snapped over to the entrance area of the park – Main Street, USA.

A disturbance had rippled across several planes of existence.

Suddenly, several people – adults and children alike – dropped dead. And then faded into nothing, their life force signatures... their souls being erased from existence. The rest of the humans just continued to mill about as if nothing had happened.

"What the—" was all Gabriel sputtered before another, much larger ripple tore across the whole park.

Hundreds of people disappeared, gone in a haze of smoke.

The three celestials stared in horror at the sudden loss of life— no, Creation.

Castiel's phone rang a few tense moments later. It was Dean. The older Winchester brother wanted to know what was with the random smoke cloud that had passed over the park. Castiel could only reply that he didn't know and then hung up.

"Gabriel..." Castiel started in a low voice. His phone was forgotten, resting passively in his right hand. "What just happened?"

The youngest archangel's mouth opened to answer but nothing came out. The shock Gabriel was experiencing was clear to see in his amber eyes. Those eyes widened in horror as he turned, spinning towards the section of the park he'd had Lucifer look at not five minutes before. His hands gripped the railing, knuckles white like the material of the railing itself.

A sob was ripped from his lips. "No," he gasped. With his head bowed, a tear dropped from his cheek onto the railing, another and another following soon after as he curled in on himself. "No! No, no nono— S-she's gone... Dammit!"

Gabriel's grief rapidly transformed from sorrow to rage. "Where's that bitch?!" he practically roared, eyes flashing a dangerous molten gold.

And then it clicked for Castiel. Fate. The people not just dying but being wiped from the face of the Earth... Castiel had seen it before – with Atropos. But this didn't feel like Atropos. Could it have been–?

A massive ripple that shook even the physical plane ripped through all of existence. Gabriel swayed once before suddenly collapsing. Lucifer – whose eyes hadn't been taken off of Gabriel ever since the younger archangel had moved to the railing – caught Gabriel before his head hit the railing. Lucifer frowned as the edges of Gabriel's form started to blur.

"Lucifer, it's the Fates," Castiel said hurriedly. "Something must have happened, and they're setting everything back to what they've determined is as it should be."

"But nothing has changed," Lucifer refuted. "Gabriel and I would have felt any sort of disturbance in the time continuum."

"They think otherwise."

"Watch over him."

Castiel didn't have to be told that, but Lucifer gave the command anyway. It was both an outlet of Lucifer's protectiveness over Gabriel and a sign of Lucifer's trust in Castiel. And while Castiel felt some amount of pride in having that trust, now was not the time to be celebrating the gain – especially when they were both so close to a loss.

~o-O-o~

Lucifer found her sitting at a spinning wheel in a small cottage within the park. It hadn't taken him long to trace her work back to here. He hadn't risked taking his time. Not when Gabriel's life was on the line.

"Lucifer," she greeted him as if saying hello to a young child.

"Clotho," he returned, not bothering to keep the malice out of his tone.

The Moirae continued to spin the wheel, creating thread from the wool in a basket off to the side. Her posture betrayed nothing of what she felt nor of her role in what had occurred outside. To a human, she would just look like some old woman spinning thread, but Lucifer could see the fabric of the universe being drawn into that thread.

"I see that you're here about those outside… Particularly your brother, no?"

Lucifer didn't let her astute observation faze him. Clotho was one of the Fates. Her knowing things was typical of her type. "Change it back."

A flicker of a smile passed across her face. "So demanding for one who knows the rules."

"Those rules were broken when they were made. Free Will is the style these days. Now. Change. It. Back."

"No can do, Lucifer," said a new voice.

Blue eyes flicked over to the owner to see that it was Lachesis. "Why not?"

"Because the world has strayed off the path long enough," she answered.

"There is no path," Lucifer spat. "That was made perfectly clear when God left with His sister to all points nowhere for a vacation."

But Clotho was already shaking her head. "There is still a path that we all follow. Distorted it has become over the years, yes, but it is there. And you have fallen off of it for some time now."

"Didn't I just say that free will—"

Lachesis held up her free hand (the other holding a clipboard), cutting him off. "We have considered both the will of your father and the discrepancies of free will. In any event, where you stand now is nowhere near where you should be. Another example would be Gabriel. His current existence defies the natural order."

"And you're 'fixing' this all now?" Lucifer seethed. "Perfect timing."

"Your opinion is noted, Morning Star," Clotho said coldly.

Lucifer's eye twitched at the dismissal. "I'm not leaving until I know Gabriel will still be there, alive and perfectly well, when I get back to Castiel."

The two Fates looked at each other. Obviously they weren't keen on sparing Gabriel from the 'corrections' they were making.

"You said I was off the path… What if I got back on?" Lucifer tried. "Would you leave everyone else alone? Would you put them back?"

"That's not how it works—"

"Don't give me that, you old hags," Lucifer snarled, cutting Lachesis off. "Fix them, or I'll go back to just before you starting changing things and smite you both."

"Temper, temper," Clotho chuckled, her hands on the spinning wheel pausing as she turned her gaze on him.

"Only your father can threaten us," Lachesis tsked, waving a finger at him.

Lucifer very tempted to snap that finger in half. This was just another reason to hate that destiny crap. He couldn't kill the Fates off without… consequences – not necessarily on the universe ending scale but certainly on the cosmic one. Still, these two were pissing him off.

"Daddy's gone," he growled, a feral smirk crossing his face. "That puts me at the top of the food chain."

That got a reaction: a tensing of frame. So they were scared of him. Good. One would have to be either crazy or stupid to not fear the wrath of an archangel.

"Well, ladies? Do I have to follow through on that… threat?" He put emphasis on the word to let them know that he was fully intending to go further than just smite them if they didn't agree.

He never got an answer.

Lucifer was blasted off of his feet and rendered unconscious, the world going black.

~o-O-o~

Urd glanced over to where her sisters were usually weaving the threads of fate into their loom. Verdandi and Skuld had gone out to... deal with the dramatic changes and would be returning soon. Urd had made sure that everything had been put back to the way it had been before those Greek hypocrites messed with things. Seriously, those idiots thought it would be okay to pull an immediate reset. No subtly whatsoever.

That's what would put you on the radar. That's what would get you caught. That's what would get you killed.

Silly Greco-Roman deities. They thought because they were so well-known around the world that they could get away with more than the other pantheons. As if!

But still, while most of the pagan societies had (by now) acknowledged the superior status of the Creator and His immediate children, there were those that had yet to get over their superiority complexes and admit that the archangels really could wipe them all out with a simple snap of their fingers.

Those fools who still thought themselves above the archangels would learn eventually, and the others didn't brother to correct them – that was mainly because those fools were also the ones who usually pissed the others off the most.

Not that such matters weren't important, but they were part of a digression. Now, back to the matter at hand…

Urd looked back down to the thread in her hands. She twirled it a little, watching the sparks of Creation connected to the string shimmer and twinkle with Power. No one appreciated the work that the Fates – all of them – put into weaving the fabric of universe, into providing a Path for all of those who lived. Well, there was one who had truly thanked the Norns a couple times during his stay in the Norse pantheon.

Urd chuckled at the memory of him. Loki had always been odd for a god, and not always for his own good. The archangel had gone to them first and told Urd and her sisters his story. Understanding the archangel's need to get away from his fighting brothers, to get away from his past, to be something other than what he was expected to be, the Norns agreed to help him.

They showed him how make his own vessel, gave him another name and directed him to a young Odin. The rest was more or less history, though mythology often got the tales of Loki wrong more often than not… Still, it was all in the past now.

The past was made to be final and unalterable. The present was all in the moment. And the future? The future was far more dynamic and volatile than that of what destiny claimed to be, and it left ample room for individual agency in the shaping of said destiny. To put it in other terms, time (and therefore the past, present and future) was cyclical rather than linear. Not what those Moirai referred to as a single path.

"Sister, you're getting yourself riled up, thinking about them," Verdandi chuckled as she and Skuld entered their space beneath Yggdrasil.

"Not as if they'll be a problem anymore, I should think," Skuld inputted with a half smile.

"However," Verdandi started a touch cautiously. "We may have encountered a slight problem when we were setting everything back…"

Urd finally looked up from the loom. "What sort of problem?"

"Well…"

Skuld rolled her eyes and picked up where Verdandi trailed off. "The Creator's second left a deal open before we could step in."

"And you remember what happened the last time someone left an open deal up for interpretation—"

"Story short, it didn't end well for the poor sap," Skuld concluded before Verdandi could go into a long and boring retelling of 'what happened the last time'.

Urd huffed her acknowledgment of the statement. She trusted her sisters to do their jobs as they trusted her to do hers. Now that they had reworked the world back to what it was, it was time to go back to their usual routine.

Verdandi sighed a little as she picked up what Urd was feeling. "You know we can't do anything else to help him. Any more interfering could cause a cosmic imbalance."

"Of course she knows," Skuld said offhandedly. "She just can't get over her major soft spot for the little archangel."

"Oh, stop it. We all had a soft spot for him," Verdandi rebuked with a slight glare.

"It doesn't matter," Urd interrupted before an argument could break out. "We can't do anything more…" Not unless Gabriel came to them first.

~o-O-o~

He woke up to the stench of blood.

Blue eyes snapped open to stare at a staggering amount of red.

His back hurt. Something was drying on his arms and hands.

Those blue orbs were dragged down to look at the hands.

Blood. That was blood. A lot of blood.

What happened..?

Blue eyes flicked back up.

Bodies. Three. Completely torn apart. There was an arm – ripped off near the shoulder and tossed to the side of its owner – with the hand a crushed mess. When he looked at the owner's face, glassy eyes stared back at him. A gruesome mask of agony and horror was permanently etched upon Clotho's screaming face.

Lucifer blinked and looked away, shaking his head. But that only made the throbbing in his skull worse. He let out a hiss at the stabbing pain and went to hold a hand to his head when he remembered the sticky red substance coating said hand. He made a disgusted face at his hand before putting it back down in his lap.

He was sitting with his back against the wall of the building, his mind distantly registered as he took in the bloody massacre before him. It was almost four in the afternoon – about six hours since the Moirai started messing with things. Five hours since he met with Clotho and Lachesis. Five hours for this to have happened.

Five hours that Lucifer didn't remember.

Did he do this?

Lucifer stared for another minute, considering his options. Finally, he settled on the only one that would help calm his racing heart and sooth his frayed nerves.

Find Gabriel.

A/N: So... the Fates/Norns weren't even supposed to show up in this fic (and I don't plan on having them come back, except being mentioned). I just kind of got sidetracked and randomly got inspired – they just happened to fit in as I was working through this chapter. Anyways, I'm back from the beach. More chapters are on the way... as soon as I write them. But yeah, it's good to be back (again).

Last edited: [August 12, 2018]

Broken Twisted Lullabies: Your excitement is appreciated, and despite the end of the chapter, we're not done with Disney World just yet (speaking of, that was certainly chaotic, wasn't it?).

Jacquelyn Glover: Hey, I can't cook or bake either – my little sister got that talent. Plus having Gabriel stress baking was just fun (and it's this little cannon in my head that the real Gabriel would totally do it if he wanted to).

Borrowed Silence: I had a wonderful time. Thank you :3 XD