Chapter 6

Torment Me, Calm Me, Hurt Me

They were getting worse. The blackouts – if one could even label them as just that anymore.

It wasn't right. Ignoring the fact that they shouldn't have even been happening, they were starting to cause… problems. The blackouts were getting longer, first of all. Then there were the things that he was doing during those blank holes in his memory.

Sam had been the first victim of this consequence. Beforehand, Lucifer remembered combing through several texts in his room, and then suddenly he was in the library with a hand on his shoulder. Instincts had taken over, and the rest was history. What Lucifer didn't understand was how (and when) he had gotten to the library.

At that point in time, and excluding the initial event, Lucifer hadn't ever moved during one of his blackouts (the three of them that he could identify). So when he realized that he had in fact moved, a gnawing monster of worry – not fear, he couldn't let it get to him that much – settled in his chest. And while the next two blackouts weren't nearly as heart-stopping as the one that left him in the library, he couldn't help but feel a creeping anxiety about what might happen next time.

Then he and Gabriel had a falling out.

He hadn't— he hadn't even registered what had happened until well after Gabriel had stormed off. Lucifer had been on the verge of a breakdown, only barely keeping it together... and he hated it.

He was Lucifer – the second oldest being in all of Creation, the first of His sons to finally say no to Him, the Tempter, Satan, bringer of the Apocalypse— Did he need to go on? This shouldn't have been happening to him.

The Fates: They were the only thing that he could trace this all back to. It all started with them. He had given in and told Gabriel so… though without telling Gabriel the full extent that it was affecting him. Gabriel must have known Lucifer wasn't telling him everything, but the younger archangel simply nodded and went off on his own search for answers.

By now they were only holding everything together with the makings of a shoddy truce. Neither was telling the other the whole truth – especially not to the other residents of the Bunker, even as willing as they were to help. But then Gabriel had sent them all away. It just the two of them to do as they would, and hopefully they would spend that time talking their troubles out.

What Sam and Dean and Mary and Castiel wouldn't know was that Lucifer and Gabriel didn't in fact talk their troubles out while the others were gone – over their bond or aloud. This, however, wasn't as bad a thing as some might think. You see, while Gabriel left Lucifer in the Bunker once more, it was in search of knowledge that they had yet to find within the Bunker's vast stores of information. Lucifer agreed to continue looking through the Bunker's archives, as fruitless as it was already seeming, and Gabriel tracked down some of his… friends.

~o-O-o~

Gabriel was going to throw up. Ugh— if he had to go through one more Dad-forsaken swamp… Oh, ew— was that— what kind of slime glowed? And why was it sticking to his hair?! Ew! No, just no. No, nonononono. And now it was soaking through his shirt, which was starting to freeze against his skin because of the subzero temperature around him…

Gabriel felt like he might cry tears of frustration, or maybe revulsion. This was absolutely disgusting! Okay, so maybe if he were still just an archangel and his human half wasn't acting up, he could stop being so squeamish. And it really, really didn't help that one of his past human lives had a thing against swamps and slime and the things in the water that could totally eat you whole if they wanted to.

No— don't even start thinking about that.

Just focus on putting one foot in front of the other.

Why the hell did Baba Yaga have to move her stupid hut thing to the coldest wetlands on Earth? Why couldn't she have just gone somewhere nice and relatively dry and not so cold? Sure, Russia wasn't exactly known for its warm weather, but come on!

And that wasn't the worst thing— no, no. The worst part was that the old hag had warded that stupid walking hut of hers so that he couldn't just fly or teleport in. That was the reason he was wading through the algae and slime infested waters to get there. He would have been completely fine if he could've just flown in. But no, he had to find her house the hard way!

Stupid cold water. Stupid glow-y slime. Stupid swamp. Stupid house that looked kinda like a chicken because it literally stood on chicken legs. Stupid old witch who may or may not have the information he wanted.

His next step landed his foot into a section of water much deeper than the surrounding shallows. "Oh, what now?" he groaned, feeling his foot slowly sinking into the silt.

Gabriel tried yanking his leg out of the water. It budged maybe a centimeter. Shit, he was stuck.

"You have got to be kidding me," he growled with no small amount of frustration.

And then something especially slimy snaked around the ankle of his stuck leg.

A bemused noise escaped his lips. Oh, this was so not funny. This wasn't within a hundred miles of okay. He was not about to get swept away by some tentacle monster! He'd had some weird sexual fantasies (some of which he may or may not have explored) during his long run as a trickster, but he had made an agreement with all parts of himself that he was not going there again (for very innocent reasons, mind you). And never once did he ever have the urge to get it on with tentacles!

The thing wrapped snugly around his ankle squeezed the joint once. That was Gabriel's only warning before his feet were pulled out from under him and he was sent crashing into the endless water around him. As he was swiftly dragged through the water, Gabriel supposed that now was as good a time as any to thank his Dad for not needing to actually breathe. The tentacle thing was not being particularly gentle, and Gabriel's head hit the ground beneath the water more than he cared to have his head get hit with whatever the hell was at the bottom of a swamp.

Oh, and Gabriel knew exactly who was behind it all, which was currently the only reason why he was just letting the tentacle drag him to where he would most likely meet up with Baba Yaga.

The very moment that the tentacle let go of Gabriel's ankle, the archangel flew himself to the nearest dry spot of land and rid himself of any swamp related gunk that coated his body. Several disgusted shivers racked his frame as he shook off the phantom feel of slime and tentacles. A chuckle (if you could call it that; to be honest, it sounded more like ragged coughing) sounded behind him, and Gabriel paused in his jerkish movements.

Slowly turning on his heel, he let a suave smile plaster his face. "Baba Yaga, pleasure to see you again," he greeted, not letting the strain in his voice become noticeable.

"Volos," that old, hoarse voice replied in Baba Yaga's native tongue – her dark, beady eyes glimmering with a black humor, "or should I say Loki, or perhaps Gavril? Either way, it has been a long time."

Gabriel held back a wince. Okay, maybe meeting up with a millennia old witch, who more than likely had a grudge against him for his mere existence, probably wasn't the best of ideas. "Yeah, a couple hundred years… give or take."

"Come now, Trickster. I know you're not here for simple pleasantries," Baba Yaga crooned, striking the wooden end of her broom twice against the ground and summoning her chicken hut.

The hut itself was large enough to house at least three people at any given time, but put on the chicken legs, it looked almost twice as big, especially while looking up at it from the ground. Sure, Gabriel had seen larger and cooler structures in his life (as well as having seen it the one time he'd spoken with Baba Yaga beforehand), but sometimes you just have to appreciate a hut with the enlarged legs of a chicken.

He would have absolutely loved to use his own version of the house in some trick or another, but sadly, he'd never found anyone to use it properly against. Maybe he could sic a tiny one on Sam and Dean while it was just them in the Bunker as a practical joke (though Gabriel didn't feel like Castiel or Mary would find it funny). Their reactions would be hilarious. Right, he made a mental note to do it eventually.

When the hut finally arrived (its imminent presence not even close to being subtle as it moved through the swamp), it crouched down to let them inside. Baba Yaga entered her home without bothering to wave him inside, so he simply followed, taking note of any horrifying details he could exaggerate whenever he made the miniature version of it.

Inside the hut wasn't nearly as eerie or mysterious as the outside and was actually rather homey. There was a small fire was burning in the stove, heating the room and probably the rest of the house since he was pretty sure she was using a spell to keep out the cold. What qualified as Baba Yaga's living room had old tomes strewn about the place – some open, some closed and stacked upon one another – and a few plants in pots on the window sill with only the flickering fire and the natural light from outside to brighten the room.

Gabriel took one look at the sofa and decided that he could just stand.

Turning his gaze back to the old witch, who was doing something in her kitchen, he noticed that she didn't look as old as she used to. She had gotten rid of some of her wrinkles and turned her hair from its previous coarse white to a smooth silver. Her dark colored eyes still sort of gave him the creeps. At least she didn't have warts on her nose anymore, and that crooked tooth that used to be very visible even with her mouth closed was gone.

He supposed that with her almost absolute isolation out here in the swamp, she didn't need to distort her features to scare people off and so she let her natural features take hold. If anything, Gabriel could easily see her as that wise, old grandmother who wasn't necessarily mean but wasn't very nice either – letting you figure things out after giving you a cryptic message to decipher on your own. (Hmm, who did that remind him of?)

Gabriel shook his head of the thoughts, bringing himself back to the present as Baba Yaga set down her mortar and pestle along with several dried herbs down on a clear space on a table across from him. He vaguely recognized two of the flowers as saffron and St. John's wort, and he was like seventy-five percent sure that one of the sticks might have been from a Jamaica Dogwood. And… were those oats she already had in the mortar?

Baba Yaga began grinding the grain into a fine dust, ignoring his questioning stare. Soon enough, she asked him: "Well? What brings you here, Trickster?"

"I came in search of answers," he replied, being mindful of his words. Baba Yaga was a bit of a trickster herself, twisting responses back onto the recipient or just altogether avoiding a straight answer.

"And what answers do you seek, hmm?" she murmured. Four saffron flower heads were added into the mix, slowly getting ground down into a powder.

Gabriel narrowed his eyes at the mixture but looked back up at her to voice his question. "What do you know of the Greco-Roman Fates?"

"I know several things about the Moirai. What do you wish to know?"

"Everything you can tell me," he answered as a root of valerian was put into the mortar only to be ground under the weight of the stone pestle.

A wicked grin crossed Baba Yaga's face before she began to tell him all she knew of the three Fates and what happened to those who crossed them. It was from her that Gabriel learned of the troubles that came with leaving a deal unclosed as well as the power someone could have over another if they took over the offering side without letting the other know, as what usually happened in most 'open deal' cases.

Gabriel had an idea of what was affecting his brother. Now he just needed to know who had taken over the Moirai's end of the deal. It would also have been more than helpful to know how to break the deal or at least close it without any bad repercussions. But that wasn't something that Baba Yaga knew.

Still, Gabriel could leave with at least something, which was better than nothing.

Stepping out onto the porch, Gabriel noticed that Baba Yaga had moved the hut while she'd been talking. He turned, wanting to give the witch his thanks and tell her farewell, when suddenly a cloud of something was sprayed at his face. Choking on the herbal scented concoction from the action of inhaling on human habit, Gabriel tried to expel the powder from his lungs to no avail.

He was still coughing as the world began to blur around him, the edges of his vision going dark. Baba Yaga gave him a somewhat apologetic smile before pushing him off of her porch with the end of her broom. A brief thought occurred to him as he fell, water swallowing him into its icy yet shallow depths.

If he really wanted to know how to close Lucifer's deal, he would have to go the three beings who were closest to the Moirai.

And then, the world went black.

~o-O-o~

Lucifer looked up to see Gabriel stomping down the Bunker's entry stairs with an angry scowl marring his face. The older archangel was pretty sure that he hadn't done anything recently to piss Gabriel off, and that was including his most recent black out. He had been alone in the Bunker when it happened after all. So Gabriel had to be mad about something that occurred while he'd been out and about.

"How'd it go?" he asked as casually as he could. Now that Gabriel was closer, Lucifer could see… was that glowing slime in Gabriel's hair? "I'm changing my question. What happened?"

Gabriel glared at Lucifer, but then his scowl softened and Gabriel let out a sigh, weariness washing over their bond. "I got knocked out by a witch, and she dumped me in the swamp she loiters around while I was still out of it."

Lucifer fought a smirk that threatened to form on his lips. "So the fluorescent slime is..?" he started the question, trailing off with a poorly concealed laugh disguised as a cough.

The glare was back. "From some kind of magic discharge the witch's house lets out that made its way into the water. It mixed with the algae or something and that's why it's green."

"Well, it's not that bad then," Lucifer pointed out, and Gabriel rolled his eyes at him, snapping his fingers to rid himself of the slime and dry off once more. He took a seat in the chair across from Lucifer, who had several books laid out on the table before him. "I assume you learned something."

Gabriel nodded. "But I'm still following a lead that could make this whole thing crystal clear. When are the others getting back?"

"Tomorrow morning at the very latest," Lucifer answered after a moment of thought.

"Crap," Gabriel groaned into his hands as he ran them down his face. "Baba knocked me out longer than I thought."

"Baba?"

Gabriel waved a dismissive hand. "She's this old Slavic witch that can be helpful if she's in a good mood."

"Wait— so she was in a relatively good mood but decided to go ahead and dump you in a swamp anyway?" Lucifer mused.

"Ha ha, laugh it up," Gabriel grouched. "Yes, she was in a good mood. If she hadn't been, I wouldn't have been able to even talk to her."

"And this lead of yours?" Lucifer prompted, steering the conversation to the subject that had Gabriel going out in the first place.

Gabriel frowned for a moment before responding. "If we're still keeping my outings from Sam and Dean, I'm going to need at least a week and a half…"

Lucifer's jaw clenched when he realized Gabriel wasn't going to continue. His little brother had been notably keeping his leads secretive, only telling Lucifer who he'd gone to see after he'd met with his sources (even then, Gabriel would rarely mention their names; Baba Yaga was apparently an exception because of her ability to keep even Gabriel from finding her himself – she had brought him to her after all). Lucifer understood Gabriel's reasoning behind keeping his informants secret.

But there was something about this next 'lead' that was setting Lucifer off. At least a week and a half? Gabriel had barely needed five days with the 'old Slavic witch', and she was supposed to be the hardest to find. Who was Gabriel going to see that he needed a week and a half?

"Relax, Luci…" Gabriel murmured over their bond. Gabriel's voice in Lucifer's mind alone was enough to break the tension building in Lucifer's shoulders. "It just takes a while getting there. They're not exactly on Earth."

Lucifer tilted his head to the side in a silent question. "Then I guess it's a good thing I've found the Winchesters and Castiel another case. How long do you think it'll take them to figure out there's a will-o'-the-wisp in Massachusetts?" he asked, reveling in talking to Gabriel over the bond.

"Well, that's what? A little over two days of straight driving to get there from Washington State, and well over a day to get to here from Massachusetts. There's half a week right there…" Gabriel figured with a shrug.

A sly grin broke across Lucifer's lips. "And if I don't tell them what they're hunting, you'll get your week and a half."

"Perfect," Gabriel said aloud, mirroring Lucifer's grin with one of his own. "Now to just call the Ghostbusters."

~o-O-o~

Gabriel never really did like coming down here. 'Down' being relative to the World Tree, or rather, Yggdrasil. And 'here' being at the roots of Yggdrasil. It was always cold and a bit stuffy and smelled like decaying wood and mist (if you could complain about that last one). Of course, the journey itself wasn't all that bad – just long. And he'd had to get say-so from Thor – since Odin was dead, Thor had become the ruler of Asgard – to enter the Norns' domain without getting into any trouble (that had only taken three days, thankfully).

"Greetings, archangel," the smooth voice of Verdandi called to him.

Though perpetually dark on the ground beside the roots of Yggdrasil, Gabriel was still able to make out the middle-aged form of the Norn of Necessity. Her younger sister, Skuld, was standing to Verdandi's left and collecting sand. Urd's crouched figure was somewhat harder to see as she was drawing water from the Well of Fate into an urn.

"You know what I need," he said simply, getting right to the point.

Skuld let out a chuckle that held not a note of amusement. "We've known since it began."

"My sisters resolved the Moirai's attempts at an immediate reset. A poor decision on the Greco-Roman Fates' end," Urd spoke up as she gracefully stood, still holding the urn.

"But Lucifer—"

"What's been done is done," Urd cut him off.

Verdandi gave Gabriel a sympathetic look. "We could only fix what the Moirai messed with. Lucifer made the contract with them of his own violation, whether he fully understood what he was doing or not."

"We can do nothing for him," Skuld concluded.

Gabriel refrained from showing his frustration. Fates and their rules. Right, just work with them. You'll eventually reach a compromise. Besides, Gabriel knew the Norns had a soft spot for him… as minor as it was. "What can you do for me?"

"We can give you the means, Gabriel," Verdandi answered.

She waved her hand over a small pool of water that had collected from the mist about them. An image came into being on the surface of the water. Gabriel recognized it as his archangel blade, the one the Winchesters had given back to him a few months ago. The image faded and was replaced with what some would only perceive as pure white, but Gabriel knew it as a version of Lucifer's true form.

He frowned. What were they..?

No.

"But you must finish the job yourself," Skuld continued, letting a pinch of sand enter the water.

The white turned black, burning red eyes glowed in the dark puddle. Crimson seeped into the image, and a new image formed, showing a bloody massacre. It changed again, but this time Gabriel couldn't stand to look at it as he realized what it depicted.

"Please, don't make me do this. I— I can't do that to him…" he begged with a stuttered breath, his eyes averted up to look at the Norns.

Urd returned his pained expression. "You've said it yourself, Gabriel. No one makes you do anything."

In unison, the Norns proclaimed: "To complete the contract, the Fallen must Fall."

A/N: Hey, guys... I'm back again... Yay? I struggled with this so much this chapter. You have no idea… Like – it's... ugh… But then I just hit an epiphany or something because I finished it over a short weekend. It made me so happy. Okay, so plot is really getting pushed right now, but it's something. (Also, I notice I totally ignored my own note and put the singular form of the Greek Fates in the last chapter instead of the plural. I have fixed that.)

But seriously, that 'game' from last chapter still stands, though, with this chapter I'd have to add the days from here. Hint: It's over a year now. Like, what do I have to do to get a response nowadays? Do I just leave you guys/gals speechless or something?

Last edited: [August 12, 2018]

Avenage99: Yeah, the chocolate model hellhound was actually an idea stemming from my little sister when I was bouncing ideas off of her. I needed something absolutely absurd but ridiculously hilarious that people could see Gabriel doing, and it just fit so well XD Gabriel and Lucifer are kind of making it back to a stable brotherly relationship, but (spoilers, not really though) something bad is obviously about to happen. Also, I think you'll be happy to know that I've gotten admittance letters from two of the three colleges I've applied to so far :3