Chapter 8

Learned the Truth Too Late

Gabriel knew what he would have to do the moment he felt his bond with his older brother fade into practically nothing.

He had gotten past the childish notion of denial days ago. There was no denying what had happened to Lucifer. There was no denying what was happening to Lucifer. There was no denying what had to be done to Lucifer.

"But he will be saved," that young voice whispered to him.

Gabriel let out a scoff. "At a cost I'm not willing to pay."

Lucifer would hate him for even considering it. It was inhumane, let alone remotely angelic. Gabriel doubted even demons would cross that line. And if Lucifer didn't hate him afterwards, he was still left to hate himself.

"We've been through this before," the boy commented, "though it was Lucifer who thought that you would hate him."

"So what if he forgives me? I would never forgive myself," Gabriel growled in response.

Golden-amber eyes prowled the prairie landscape before them. There was no other living animal around for miles. The wind, influenced by the archangel's inner turmoil, whipped the grass back and forth, making the light brown stalks bend in hypnotizing waves. Overhead, the eye of the clear blue sky cast its bright rays down upon the surface of the Earth, a steady contrast to the constant change about him.

"It's the best option available to us. I hate it as much as you do, but it's either this or leave him to be what can only be described as a slave," Bennett said with a sigh.

Gabriel closed his eyes and ran both of his hands through his hair, tugging at the loose strands that wove between his fingers. He couldn't do that to his brother. He wouldn't have even done it if Lucifer was going to end the world as humanity knew it again. No angel deserved what the Norns had shown Gabriel.

"I can't," he brokenly replied, dropping his hands back down to his side, casting his gaze upwards in a silent, hopeless prayer.

The ghost of a touch held his right hand. Glancing to the side, Gabriel caught a glimpse of Gabriel Bennett's transparent form looking up at him. "We should at least tell the others."

With a nod, Gabriel blinked, and the boy had disappeared from all view. But the archangel could still feel Bennett where his grace mixed with the odd layering of 'souls'. He wasn't alone anymore, that human half reminded him. He had people he could rely on to help – people who relied on him in turn.

He wasn't alone, and he had a brother to save.

~o-O-o~

"Woah— Time-out. Okay, hold on. So you've known for how long what was wrong with Luce, and you didn't tell anyone," Dean practically shouted.

He was furious. This was the kind of bullshit that usually started another Apocalyptic mess. But of course, it was one thing to learn of the mistake and another to learn from that mistake. And what was the number one thing that always led to shit hitting the fan? Oh, nothing but keeping secrets from the people closest to you!

"Dean," Sam started, putting a placating hand on his brother's arm. "Let him finish."

The older Winchester brother let out a growl but didn't go on, settling for glaring at the archangel in front of him. Gabriel met Dean's burning gaze with a golden flame in his amber eyes. Maybe it was a good thing that Mary and Cas were out of the Bunker on a grocery run. Maybe it wasn't. Either way, it was better for all of them to get the Winchester brothers' disapproval of Gabriel's… decision out of the way.

"I'm not sure what else there is to tell," Gabriel said emotionlessly, his voice dead of its usual cheerful inflections.

"Well, you've told us what you know about Lucifer's open deal, but you haven't told us how to fix it. I can tell you know. You've known since we got back from Massachusetts. That's what's been bothering you," Sam concluded, locking concerned eyes with regret-filled ones. "What is it that has to be done that's so bad you won't help your brother?"

Gabriel broke eye contact with Sam, closing his eyes and turning his face upwards with a sigh as he shifted his weight between where he stood and his grip on the back of one of the library's chairs. "It's not a solution, Sam. It's trading one shitty way to live for another."

"Right because whatever it is will be worse than being someone else's bitch—"

Gabriel's eyes snapped open at Dean's snide remark, golden anger flaring. "He would rather die than what I'd have to do to him. So forgive me for being selfish, but I don't want my brother to die," he hissed.

"Gabriel," Sam started, trying to be a voice of reason. "If what's happening to Lucifer is anything like your sources told you, then if that deal doesn't close, Lucifer will just be an empty shell of himself. He essentially will be dead."

"How many times do I have to tell you?! I can't do that to him," Gabriel snapped, pushing himself back to pace alongside the bookshelves.

Dean let out a frustrated groan. "You haven't even told us what 'that' is."

Gabriel whipped around to face him, a finger pointed right at his face. "Don't," he growled, "don't you dare—"

"Dare what?" Dean goaded, standing up to meet Gabriel's challenge before Sam could stop him. "It's not like we're getting anywhere with you brushing us off. So, yes, I do dare to get all up in your business because like it or not, you and Lucifer are important to us. Okay?! That's right, you stupid, feathered moron. Welcome to the human family that's just as messed up as your angelic one. Now let us help, dammit!"

Sam and Gabriel were staring at Dean with varied levels of stunned shock. Dean inwardly scoffed and then rolled his eyes. Was what he'd just said so hard to believe? Okay, so maybe Dean wasn't the best at expressing how he felt about some things, but surely Sam at least understood how he operated at this point.

Either way, they'd all been living in the Bunker since May for crying out loud. There was bound to be some kind of camaraderie forming amongst them. At the very least, they didn't hate each other as much as they had last December.

Gabriel stilled at the proclamation. The fury didn't drain from his eyes, still burning with that golden flame, but something else flickered in the recesses of their bright color. Something... darker? No, something brown.

Shit. Dean knew that look – kind of. He knew about it of course (they all did), but he'd only really seen the subtle difference once sometime back in the month of August. Dean was tempted to say hey to the kid; however, one would have to be stupid to not see that Gabriel Bennett shared the archangel's ire.

"And what, Dean, would you be able to do?" Gabriel said in a voice that was not outright furious but not necessarily placated either.

Sam chose that moment to speak up. "We'll be there, Gabriel. You don't have to do this alone."

Brown began to cloud gold. Gabriel's stance visibly released the form wracking tension that had built between the archangel's shoulders. A small self-depreciating smile crossed his lips as Gabriel met Sam's concerned gaze.

"It's not that simple, Sam," he responded morosely. "Even having all the time in the universe wouldn't bring us the right answer."

"So what if it's not the right way? It's the better option," Dean inputted after a moment of harsh silence.

That small smile turned grim. "You would have me cut off Lucifer's wings then?"

Dean's mind blanked. He wasn't registering the words that had slipped from Gabriel's mouth. Cut off Lucifer's wings..? "What?"

"The only options I have are to let him be at the whims of another or to ground him forever. Should I leave him to be a slave or make him what he rebelled against to prove a point?"

Cut off his wings... Make Lucifer human. Lucifer would hate himself. Gabriel would hate himself for letting Lucifer go on without any form of free will. Gabriel would hate himself either way. But they could teach Lucifer to manage being human. God knows what would happen if they left Lucifer to whoever had him.

Dean met Gabriel's brown-eyed stare. "Why does it have to be his wings? Why not his grace or something?"

"'The Fallen must Fall'," Gabriel relayed, quoting the old Norns. Within the space of a blink, weary amber eyes looked back at green. "It's symbolic, Deano. Another fall from grace… just a bit more literal."

"Wait— wouldn't Lucifer still have his grace though?" Sam asked, an idea forming.

But Gabriel shot it down before the idea could come close to completion. "Yes, but he wouldn't be able to use it. It would be locked away within him. So close yet so far, as the saying goes."

Human. At the very least, a depowered angel. It was a hard enough adjustment for Cas back during the tablets and Metatron fiasco. Just how well would an archangel take being brought down to Sam and Dean's level. Especially the one who challenged God over their species' creation. And to have the very thing that made you what you were right there…

Damn, Dean's sympathy for the devil was really kicking in.

"Well," he started with a gruff sigh, sitting back down and reclining in his chair. "We gotta find him first."

"Should probably tell Mom and Cas before that," Sam muttered.

Dean frowned, a pout just on the edges of his expression. "That, too."

Sam was already way ahead of him though, pulling his tablet out of nowhere to start doing whatever he did on it. "We could probably start by pinging his phone's location, assuming that Lucifer still had it on him when he, uh, left," Sam said, stumbling over the end of his suggestion and glancing up at Gabriel.

When Sam didn't go on, his fingers pausing in their work, Dean looked over to Gabriel as well. The archangel appeared to be legitimately stunned. He was staring at them with an almost disbelieving look in his eyes. Though, what it was that had him stumped Dean wasn't sure.

It could have been a number of things. Sam trying out the human fashion of finding a missing person. Dean being pretty okay with everything now that it was all out in the open. Or maybe it was because of—

"Thank you."

That. Yeah, it could also be that. Dean let out an inward scoff. It wasn't a demeaning scoff towards Gabriel though, more a… 'I should have thought of that first' kind of scoff. He wouldn't let it show outwardly, but in that moment he felt proud of Gabriel.

When he and Sam first met what they originally only knew as the Trickster, Dean had actually kind of liked the guy's style. Then Broward County happened, and the Trickster was on Dean's shit list. After the big reveal that the Trickster was really an angel – Gabriel the archangel, no less – Dean still hated Gabriel's guts, taking him for the coward that he was. Of course, what happened in the Elysian Fields Hotel changed Dean's private opinion of Gabriel, putting the archangel on what would become a long list of dead allies and friends.

Sam and Dean never brought up the archangel-turned-trickster again. Sure, the name was mentioned and quickly dismissed sometimes while researching something, but it wasn't until they had to work with Chuck and Lucifer to defeat Amara that they took a moment to remember the other archangel that helped them. And then when they needed something that could permanently stop Lucifer, they turned to something of Gabriel's that they were pretty sure would work.

Sam and Dean never really got to use Gabriel's blade, not that they would have been able to actually use it properly since only archangels could fully utilize their blades. Still, it had been a great 'motivator' for Lucifer to cooperate while the Winchesters dealt with Gabriel Bennett, which had actually been a whole lot easier than most of the things they'd had to do over the years. Dean had been the one to figure out that the kid was more like the archangel than it first seemed, but it still took the two 'merging' or whatever to confirm that observation.

After Gabriel and Lucifer reconciled (because those two had issues that Dean didn't even want to go near sometimes) and decided to hang out with the rest of them (i.e. Sam, Dean, Mary and Cas) in the Bunker, it hadn't exactly been easy sailing from there on out, but it had certainly felt like a vacation more often than not. Sure, there was always the occasional hunt that they would all take turns going on, but there had been nothing predominantly evil that wanted to take over the world.

Dean had let himself relax. And it felt good – being able to be with his family and not have to worry about some looming big bad ready to set the world on fire.

Thing was, Dean could trace that relaxed state back to Gabriel, even if the trickster archangel caused him so much grief with his pranks. That was part of the reason why Dean was content to let both archangels stay in the Bunker. (Another being that someone had to keep an eye on those two. And besides, they were both pretty cool when they weren't being assholes.)

Though everyone could agree that they could all tolerate each other, Cas and Mary were the only ones to outwardly treat Gabriel and Lucifer like family. Sam and Dean had their moments with the archangels, but until Dean's outburst not ten minutes ago, neither had really given any indication of what they truly felt about their archangelic guests.

And because of that, there were some things that the archangels just didn't bring up to them. Dean understood that, he did. It was just that there are some end-of-the-world-as-we-know it secrets that you do not keep from other people you know who can help stop it. Which was why Dean was so pissed off at the archangel.

Which was also why Dean was proud of Gabriel now.

Both the archangel and the kid were clearly conflicted with what they had to do, and yet they came to Sam and Dean for help first. Before anyone else that Gabriel could have gone to, he chose them – two brothers that the archangel never would have bothered even considering going to eight years ago on sheer basis of who he was. But that had changed over the months that they had all gotten to know each other.

And as sappy as it sounded, they were all there for each other. They could trust one another. And that Gabriel had shown he felt the same way by telling them everything, even if it had taken a little pushing on Dean's part.

Dean threw one of his more honest grins Gabriel's way. "Don't worry about it."

~o-O-o~

In the end, after the Winchesters had exhausted their resources trying to find their missing archangel, they found Lucifer through a case.

At first glance, the article made it seem like the case was because of a demon, but there weren't any of the other signs of their hellish presence. That didn't leave much else that could have ripped those poor people apart. Dean eventually made the decision to bring everyone on the hour drive it took to get to the small town.

Gabriel agreed to go along without any fuss. He sat in the back with Mary and Castiel, staring out the window most of the journey and only messing with the radio twice before he let it be (ignoring Dean's glares as the songs grated on the older Winchester brother's nerves). When they finally arrived at the town – which barely had a population of five hundred – Gabriel hardly gave the main street's buildings a second glance.

Mary and Castiel were both casting the archangel concerned looks. Sam and Dean had filled them in on what was happening to Lucifer, but the two hadn't gotten a chance to talk to Gabriel about it. With Castiel, Gabriel and Lucifer were literally family, and Mary had taken a liking to Gabriel Bennett the moment she laid eyes on him – a liking which soon included Lucifer and later Gabriel the archangel. Needless to say, both parties were invested in the archangels' well-being.

However, with Gabriel not even speaking to them, it was hard to convey what they were feeling. Not that they really needed to. Gabriel could sense the ever constant hum of their minds, the warm presence of their souls (and grace, in regards to Castiel). But he couldn't reassure them, not honestly.

He had a sinking feeling in his grace about the 'case', and he had an inlinking about what they would find. He had seen such violence before – oh, human and demons and other creepy crawlies of the night were more than capable of the massacre shown in the article and police report. Still, he refused to voice his suspicions. He didn't want the others to walk in with a prejudice.

But when they entered the building that had been sectioned off from the rest of the town… Nothing would stop Sam or Dean from confronting the 'man' standing in the middle of the aftermath of his work. Blood was splattered everywhere in graceful patterns, like a painting. The outlines of where bodies had laid upon the ground like torqued figures or puppets, whose strings had been cut, leaning against the walls.

"What the— Lucifer?" Dean snapped as he was the first to put two and two together.

The archangel spun, blinking out of a trance, and was more than shocked to see them. "What..? I— I didn't… Th-this wasn't me."

"Then what the hell did this, Lucifer?" Dean demanded, forcefully thrusting his gun down at the ground in a frustrated release of anger.

"I don't—"

"Lucifer, tell me you didn't do kill all of those people," Mary said sadly, her eyes closed to the massacre before them.

"I didn't," he insisted.

"And I believe you," she assured him, her blue eyes meeting his. "But this doesn't look good."

It didn't look good at all. It didn't help that they knew Lucifer did do it. It was the blood on his hands that gave it away.

A/N: It has come to my attention that over half of you guys don't even read these author's notes (at my little sister and best friend, who so graciously informed me of this). On the basis that at least some people do read these, I will keep putting them here along with the review responses.

Last edited: [August 12, 2018]

Avenage99: I'm not exactly happy with what I'm writing at the moment. But don't get me wrong – I'm not going to scrap this fic. I just want to get right to the point and not jump through hoops to set everything up. I have other ideas I want to explore with this fic (*cough* the BMOL *cough*), but I can't exactly get to them until I finish this arc with Luci first.