Chapter 12
Never Out of Sight
The moment Gabriel opened his eyes – the pupils contracting at the light pouring in through window – he immediately shut them again, rolling over and burying his face into the soft pillow. A moment after that, he let out a kill-me-now groan.
"I'm so screwed."
~o-O-o~
Dean was trying not to glare. He was trying, okay? It was just that so much shit had happened in the past month alone (okay, it was closer to two – maybe three, to be honest – months, but who the hell was counting anymore), and he was so done.
At one point he had foolishly thought that having Lucifer and Gabriel both settle down in the Bunker would be a good thing, but nooo. No, no no. That was just a short term thing. In the long run, Dean had to put up with just as much crap as he usually did, albeit with less apocalyptic bullshit going on. What happened was the ultimate taker for number one of the things-that-Dean-shouldn't-have-to-deal-with-right-now at the moment, but this was coming hot on its heels as a close second.
It was probably a very good thing that Sam was there to help Dean keep his cool. It was still a very close thing. At least the hot fairy queen was gone. While she had left with a devious smirk that meant no good whatsoever, she had told them that since they had caught the person who'd been summoning her people, she was assured that Sam and Dean could find the killer and put a stop to him (or her) as well without her needing to be around. It was kinda cool to have a vote of confidence from a fairy queen, but then Sam had gone to check on Gabriel. That's when they learned about the 'favor' she'd done for them regarding Gabriel.
Dean knew, he knew it had been a bad idea to let Gabriel go do his own thing during the case. But every time he'd walked across the hall and knocked on the door, Quintessa – Queenie, she'd insisted (that's what all her friends called her) – had told them that either Gabriel was out or he was otherwise unavailable. Apparently that was code for in-a-coma and/or having-another-existential-crisis. And the aftermath was what they were left with.
Maybe it was just a thing nowadays for Sam and Dean to be left with the fallout of some important potentially-world-changing shit. It couldn't possibly be that the universe simply hated them, could it?
"This is awkward."
"A little, yeah," Dean bit out, eyes narrowing at the boy nervously sitting on the bed.
"Dean," Sam said warningly.
Dean rolled his eyes, forcing himself to shake the tension out of his body, and then picked up a pen from the desk only to focus on releasing the rest of his frustration in increments by fiddling with the pen. This was ridiculous. He was going to have either a heart attack or an aneurism or both by the end of the year if this kept up.
"I can explain? Sort of."
"Please do." That earned a full on smack against his arm from Sam. "Take your time," he added with a forced smile.
Sam let out a weary sigh – more than likely just as done as Dean was, though he was doing a much better job of not directing it at anyone. "Gabriel, just start whenever you're ready."
And, see? The real kicker that had Dean so riled up was that it wasn't Gabriel the archangel looking at them shyly; it was Gabriel Bennett. Brown eyes, mostly timid demeanor, childish innocence, and all.
"I'm not really sure where to start," the boy admitted with a slight blush, looking pointedly down at his hands that he carefully placed in the center of his lap.
Sam frowned. "What do you remember last?" he prompted as Dean settled himself against the wall space next to the door.
"Well, um, it's all kind of fuzzy, but I'm aware of the past eight months." Brown eyes glanced to the right, and small hands were fidgeting, pulling at the hem of his shirt. "I know Lucifer doesn't have his wings anymore."
Dean felt like he'd been punched in the gut at the bluntness of the statement. He'd forgotten just how insightful Gabriel Bennett could be, that he wasn't just a thirteen-year-old kid. And for some reason, that one little important tidbit of a fact hurt. Sam's barely hidden grimace told Dean his little brother wasn't that much better off.
"I— Gabriel is kind of messed up over it. I think Quintessa figured that out and thought letting him— that part of me rest for a while would help," the boy continued, more or less oblivious of Sam and Dean's reactions. "She did something to let me take over without destroying this body while he fixed himself up. And no, I don't know how long that might take."
"Wait— hold on. So you're you?" Dean interrupted, waving a hand at Gabriel's seated entirety.
"Yes?"
Dean felt a scowl starting to form again. "That's not a great confidence builder there, kid."
"Uh, yes, I'm me," he amended, looking a bit lost. "But I'm still Gabriel, too. Just not all of him."
"You already were a part of him," Sam pointed out.
"Yes and no," the boy started slowly before huffing frustratedly. "Look, I don't completely understand it either. I just know that I'm me, right here, right now. And I'm not a fully powered archangel that knows everything and can take on the whole world by myself."
"Well," Dean drawled the word out, finally setting down the pen. He could deal with this later. "We still have to take care of few things in town. Sam you can stay with Gabriel while I do that stuff, and as soon as I get back, we're heading straight to the Bunker. Got it?"
~o-O-o~
Sometimes Mick wondered how exactly he ended up here. Oh, it was definitely by his own hand (quite literally; how was he – a child at that point in time – supposed to have known that the coin was cursed, not to mention Babylonian?) that he'd become part of the Men of Letters, but he should have died that day with the alpha vampire. Somehow, Ketch had gotten back to their base just in time to save him, and only him – fortunately and unfortunately.
They had both gotten into trouble with Dr. Hess, though Mick had been in deeper water than Ketch had. Even then, Ketch got him out of the frying pan and away from the fire (unless one were to label the United States of America as the fire; then they would both be in the fire). Mick had been moderately surprised that Dr. Hess actually agreed to send both of them back, especially since he'd messed up so horribly the first time around.
Bevell said it was because Ketch had used his 'charm' and that Mick was only dragged along because even the Old Men knew not to send Ketch anywhere without someone to keep an eye on his activities. Which essentially meant that in Toni's magnanimous opinion, Mick was a glorified babysitter. Not that he would ever tell Ketch that. Mick didn't feel like getting skinned alive.
Though, to be honest, he wasn't sure that Ketch would actually do that. At least, not to him… as long as Ketch was in a good mood. Mick wasn't going to test that theory. He liked life the way it was.
Well, he supposed it could be better, in a way. He certainly hadn't been getting anywhere as a child pickpocket, but there were times when he wasn't having nightmares while he slept— times when he had the occasional, deep and buried thought that this wasn't it. Whatever this and it was, he wasn't going to bring it up to anyone else. But he could swear that Ketch knew whenever Mick had one of those nights.
Sometimes Mick hated that Ketch seemed to understand those nights more than he ever could.
~o-O-o~
"Come on, we'll get some dinner at that one restaurant on the outskirts of town."
"I thought we were going straight back to the Bunker— your words."
"Shut up and get in the car."
~o-O-o~
Lucilia let out a frustrated growl as she had to erase half of the drawing once more. The other half she was rather content with. It had turned out almost perfectly – and there could only be almost perfect because nothing was perfect – but the wings refused to just look right by the time she finally had the lines down.
Rachel, one of her new friends, had told Lucilia that she was getting obsessive, but Lucilia insisted that she could get it right next time. That was four attempts ago. But Lucilia couldn't let the drawing end up looking wrong. Even if no one else could tell, she would be able to, and that was what mattered. Still… she did have a few other works she needed to finish before the end of the week.
Mr. Redfield had actually looked excited about the fact that Lucilia didn't seem to mind how odd he was sometimes, and she really didn't mind making the pictures he asked her to draw (and it had nothing to do with how he paid her to make some of them). Everyone else town just avoided him as he was the strange newcomer, so she was the one who had to remind him that he did in fact have to go out and get groceries in order to have something to eat if he wasn't going to go to one of the local restaurants.
He didn't usually ask for the drawings, but when he did, he'd get this weird look in his eyes before telling her what he'd like them to be of. Lucilia wasn't all that picky about what she was told to draw – "Lucy can draw anything," her four friends bragged – and the requests were simple enough to do.
And she was trying. To make more friends like Gabriel had 'subtly' implied the last time she'd seen him almost three months ago. To keep moving on with her 'normal' life even though she knew that her brother was an archangel and there was so much more out there. To be there for her mom, who was still barely hanging in there for her because Lucilia was all she had left.
Lillian and her parents helped. Lucilia liked being able to stay with her cousin and aunt and uncle while her mom was still recovering from the loss of her son. Her relatives were understanding, and Lucilia got along with Lillian especially well since they were practically the same age. Just having someone there helped.
"Hey, Lucy!" Lillian called to her from out in the hallway, her shoes pounding on the flooring as she ran down to their shared playroom.
"What?" Lucilia called back. She took the time to start putting her drawing materials away since she knew that Lillian would more than likely want to go to the park that wasn't that far of a walking distance away from the house.
Panting slightly and looking like she'd just run all the way here from outside, which she probably had, Lillian skidded to a halt in the doorway. "Mom and Dad said there's someone asking for you," she said, her eyes bright with her eternal curiosity.
Lucilia frowned, tilting her head to the side. "Did they say who?"
Lillian shook her head but beckoned Lucilia with a wild hand gesture to follow her as she started back to the front of the house. Lucilia was compelled to follow either way. Obviously, whomever it was happened to be someone that Lillian had never met, so it wasn't Gabriel since Lucilia knew that her cousin had seen the archangel once when he'd visited to check up on her. (Lillian could be sneaky when she wanted to be, so there was always the possibility that she really had gotten a good look of Gabriel during aforementioned visit.)
So when Lucilia stepped outside and onto the porch to find Aunt Liz and Uncle Chris nervously waiting for her to arrive. There was man with them, a man in a dark suit. He wasn't exactly what she would call intimidating, but even she could tell that he was why her aunt was telling Lillian to go back inside now. As Liz herded Lillian away – to somewhere safer – Chris moved to stand closer to Lucilia.
"He wants to talk with you alone, is that okay?" he asked in a low murmur, placing a protective hand on her shoulder. After a tense moment of thought, she nodded, and he gave her a concerned look before telling her, "I'll be just inside if you need me."
Lucilia bit her bottom lip but nodded once more. Chris squeezed her shoulder and then retreated back to the house, leaving her alone with the guy in the suit. She didn't like this. Not one bit. She especially didn't like how he was looking at her as if he were appraising a new luxury item.
"Hello there, darling," the man – not a man – said at last in a British drawl. "The name's Crowley. Your brother sent me."
~o-O-o~
Sam glanced at the rearview mirror for the fifth time in about two minutes. He wasn't trying to be a creeper or anything. It was just that… Gabriel – asleep with his head resting against the window as he was – looked more at peace than the archangel ever had, relieved of tension that always seemed to be resting on the archangel's shoulders.
Sam hadn't really gotten to know Gabriel Bennett as well as Dean and Mary had, but Sam knew Gabriel. Admittedly, Sam hated the archangel way back when for reasons that Sam had gotten over not long after the archangel had died for them. For Sam, it had only really clicked – understanding Gabriel as a whole – when Gabriel and Lucifer had come back inside the Bunker after having a heart-to-heart and deciding that they would both stay. And while Sam had still been pissed at Gabriel for messing with his hair, Sam realized then that Gabriel – for all of the masks the archangel put on and how many he had taken off for Lucifer – was still way hiding himself away.
Behind it all, behind every last wall that the archangel had built to keep everyone out, there was a piece of himself that he'd torn out thousands of years ago because he couldn't take it anymore, only to have gotten it back for a little over a year now. Gabriel Bennett was perhaps the closest one could get to the human representation of the archangel's innermost self, a patchwork of layer upon layer of soul on top of the center grace that felt so implicitly. If it was the boy who was in control right now, then Gabriel must have been far worse off about what happened than he'd been letting on. The universe must truly hate the archangels if they had ended up this broken after finally coming back together.
A sudden illumination of the backseat drew Sam's eyes back to the rearview mirror. Sam wondered if Dean had hit a bump or two in the road while he had more or less zoned out because while he remembered that Gabriel wasn't necessarily a light sleeper, there weren't many other reasons that the kid would have woken up at… 3:28 in the morning. The main reason Sam was still up was because of his nerves about getting back to the Bunker. If Dean wasn't awake, then they'd be in trouble since he was the one driving. But Gabriel didn't need to be awake yet.
And yet Gabriel was doing something on his phone. Then the boy bit back what could have only been a giggle. Dean glanced back at that but went back to driving when he took note that Gabriel was up. Sam, on the other hand, stared at the growing grin on the kid's face.
Sam was still staring when Gabriel looked up at him, scooting over on the seat to Sam's side of the car. Knowing that he already had Sam's attention, Gabriel leaned forward to whisper in Sam's ear. "Hey, Sam… It's the tenth of February."
"And?" Sam asked slowly in the same hushed tone, meeting Gabriel's conspiratorial gaze with a questioning one.
"Valentine's Day is coming up," he replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Sam frowned. "So?"
"What're you getting Miss Eileen?"
If Sam had been the one driving, they all would have died horribly due to Sam losing control and driving off the side of the road. "What's that supposed to mean?" he half-sputtered.
"Well, you like her don't you? Like… like her, like her," Gabriel said a bit more loudly, prompting a snort from Dean.
"You could just say love, dork," came Dean's huffed comment from the driver's seat.
"I— Dean," Sam hissed, glaring at his older brother before returning his gaze back to an innocent looking Gabriel. "How do you even know about us?"
Gabriel's head tilted to the side as he looked off into the distance somewhere over Dean's head. "Thanksgiving Day?" he said, questioning his own answer. He blinked several times, coming out of whatever daze he might have been in, and looked back at Sam. "I do remember some things, you know."
"And you happen to remember that one in full detail?" Sam grumbled, decidedly not pouting as he folded his arms across his chest and stared out of the passenger window.
"Well," Gabriel started somewhat sheepishly, a subtle blush creeping onto his face, "considering that Gabriel was going to offer to drop you two off somewhere nice for a date… yeah, I remember it and the plans rather vividly."
"What plans?" Dean interrupted, sticking his nose where it most certainly didn't be long.
"It's none of your business," Sam snapped.
With a 'what did I do?' expression on his face, Dean lifted one hand up in surrender. "Sheesh, someone's being a snippy bitch."
"Stay out of my private life then, jerk." Sam shot a glance over at a sleepy looking Gabriel, his tone softening as he spoke. "Hey, try to get some more shut eye. We've still got a few more hours to go before we arrive."
Gabriel was out like a light before Sam finished his sentence.
~o-O-o~
Lucifer shifted in his sleep.
There was something there. Something he could feel even with his grace kept out of his reach. Something that couldn't be taken away from him. A bond. One between himself and the boy – forged in an emotion that he'd never been able to fully grasp, one that even now he couldn't quite explain.
It was grace and soul and power and feeling. It was everything that could be yet wasn't. An enrapturement brought upon by the desperate need for a connection between two lost beings. It was home.
"Gabriel…"
A/N: I know, there's a lot going on, but it'll all come together soon enough. Trust me. (And I couldn't just let one of the stars from Be My Guest just go to waste as a voice in the back of Gabriel's head.)
Last edited: [August 12, 2018]