Chapter 14
By an Open Door
In the past year alone, Lucilia had been called too-old-for-her-age twice as much as her brother ever had. To be fair, Gabriel had always seemed to have an ancient soul – which had been more true than they'd ever realized. Lucilia learned to grow up when Gabriel left, and she had grown up fast.
It had been inevitable, really. Their father left, and Gabriel had been Lucilia's main support while their mother tried to keep what was left of their normalcy afloat. Then Gabriel disappeared without a trace, and Lucilia struggled to stay an innocent kid.
She was not as oblivious nor ignorant as Gabriel believed her to be. Sometimes it's easier for a child to accept certain facts about life. For example, that December – in those two weeks that Gabriel acted so strange right before he left – Lucilia knew nothing would be the same. Reading the note that Gabriel had left, she knew that she'd been right.
Thankfully, Gabriel did come back to her eventually. He came as a man she didn't recognize, but his soul was still the same. He was still her Gabriel, just with a side case of archangel. After he left again – this time with the promise of returning, of coming back to her –, she hadn't been sure how to process him back into her changing views.
In the end, Lucilia decided to start over, channeling anything that was left into her drawings. It was an outlet – she knew that, her mother knew it, her aunt and uncle knew it. Maybe that was part of the reason why Aunt Liz and Uncle Chris encouraged her artistic talent. (At the very least, that's what had them buying her art supplies.)
Lillian helped. Lucilia's almost-twin was a constant bundle of joy and energy, and Lucilia couldn't have asked for a better best friend. The other friends she'd made at her new school were nice to be around, but Lillian seemed to have this certain understanding that Lucilia had yet to find in the others.
Lillian didn't push when Lucilia just stopped, not wanting to talk about anything. Her cousin would just sit there with a silence and stillness that was seemingly impossible for her otherwise. Lillian also respected Lucilia's book collection far more than anyone else did – even her mom.
Lucilia had Gabriel's books. Her mom had given her a sorrowful look of disapproval when she saw the collection as they packed up their belongings so they could move to live with the Dawsons. Aunt Liz and Uncle Chris said nothing. Her friends barely gave the choice of books a glance. But Lillian had asked Lucilia if they could read them together.
After finding Gabriel's second note, Lucilia hadn't actually read the books until Lillian asked. Lucilia was now rather glad that she'd given in to Lillian's subtle (for her anyway) demands.
"I know what you are," she told the 'man', who had effectively singled Lucilia out to get them alone for this... whatever it was.
He – Crowley – smirked approvingly at her. "I wouldn't expect anything less."
"Why would Gabe send someone like you?"
"I might be offended under other circumstances, and yet if I do anything but make sure nothing happens to you, that archangel brother of yours will have my hide."
Lucilia glanced back to the house. "I can't be the only one you're here for. Gabe isn't that self-invested."
Crowley smirked, only just holding back a laugh. "You're not wrong. Apparently the prophet is in town as well," he told her.
"Prophet..?" she inquired, a frown bringing her brows together. "You mean like—"
"Don't you worry about him, darling. He's a part of matters that you don't need to worry your precious head about."
Lucilia glared at the demon (for all it was worth coming from a nine-year-old).
~o-O-o~
Sam was half tempted to barge in on Gabriel and Lucifer, knowing that if he did, not only would Mary and Dean get onto him for it but Castiel would also. But what Castiel had found was important. The angel knew it, too.
So Sam kept his mouth shut about it for now – because if Castiel thought it was worth it to bring it up to the kid then he would have (because he's Cas, and Cas still doesn't quite know how to subtly get to topics of extreme delicacy in a normal conversation). Plus, he did have to admit that interrupting Gabriel and Lucifer right now… yeah, not an option.
Sam hadn't actually watched the two interact all that much when it was still just Gabriel Bennett and his archangelic tag-along. Sam himself hadn't really interacted with the kid all that much in the first place. It had always been Dean or Mary or Castiel who was there with them. Sam had, perhaps unconsciously, avoided the two of them altogether.
But that was almost a year ago. Sam knew Gabriel (the archangel anyway), and he knew Lucifer. How different could the kid be? Very, actually – despite how often Lucifer insisted that Gabriel Bennett was not all that unlike Gabriel the archangel. (And that right there was why Sam got headaches just from thinking about the different personalities of Gabriel.)
First of all, the kid just looked so normal. There was nothing that gave away what he was. It wasn't all that hard to pick out once you knew – usually the eyes gave it away. But those brown eyes were just as natural as the next pair. Even knowing that Gabriel Bennett had the soul (grace) of an archangel, Sam would still label the kid as human if he was observing Gabriel from afar.
It was because Gabriel was human. He had been raised as one, grew up as one. He was just a kid, who had a father and a mother and a little sister. He'd gone to school, made friends, played with those friends. He had hobbies and interests and habits, favorite books and movies and games. He had a decent sense of humor and plenty of common sense, not to mention an intelligence that was naturally his. All of it was his.
And that's where the archangel started bleeding through. Sometimes Gabriel Bennett was too smart, knowing things he couldn't possibly know otherwise. His humor would sometimes take on a trickster-like edge. You could tell that the friends that he did have were few and far between because he was different – and he'd been bullied for it. His family reflected that of the archangel's in its own convoluted way. And Gabriel Bennett was only one of the many times his 'soul' had been reborn into a new body.
Sometimes it was easy to forget that Gabriel wasn't human. It was that much harder to understand when one suddenly remembered.
Second, Sam had once been told that angels (and archangels) didn't quite feel emotions the way humans did. Gabriel Bennett – despite his soul having been formed by a piece of an archangel's grace – could feel and hurt and love just like every other human out there. But instead of one personality dominating over the other like when the two were 'split' (where one could notably tell which personality was which), there was an overlap of sorts. The archangel could feel those emotions because Gabriel Bennett was feeling them.
It had confused Sam at first – in the early days when it was Gabriel the archangel, not Gabriel Bennett, who was gallivanting around the Bunker with Lucifer, doing this and that and just being himself. Sam's brain hadn't quite made the disconnect about what he knew of the archangel before and the archangel then (not including the archangel now). It was only when Gabriel had a bit of nervous lapse and stress-baked a month's worth of food (for reasons Sam now knew related to Gabriel Bennett's little sister) that it all started to come together.
And while, yes, there was an inexplicable connection between what the archangel felt and what the kid was feeling (no matter how buried beneath the archangel's personality as he was), Sam had noticed that angels could feel too. But like he'd been told, angels felt in different ways. They could understand and replicate emotions that they saw in humans in fleeting amounts, but the true emotions that they did feel ran much, much deeper than they would in a human.
"—watch this. Sam, I going to list every single important character who dies in that new Avengers movie that's coming out in a couple months!"
It took Sam about five seconds to register what Gabriel had raised his voice for was about. Of course, by that point, Gabriel had already started to ramble about how the first part of the film started a little after that last post-credits scene in Thor: Ragnarok, which was hilarious and he couldn't wait to watch it again when he did a marathon of the MCU for Avengers: Infinity War before it came out in late April. But Lucifer apparently hadn't seen Thor: Ragnarok yet for some reason, so they might as well watch the movie sometime this week since Black Panther was going to be in theaters Friday—
"Wait— how do you know who's going to die in Infinity War if Black Panther hasn't even come out yet?" Sam exclaimed from where he stood in the corridor, freezing in place as he realized he'd confirmed his presence in the hallway.
Not that Gabriel, who had told Lucifer, didn't already know he was there. The door to Gabriel's room opened, and the boy's smile reminded Sam more of his trickster persona than the archangel. "Well, after the latest trailer for Infinity War came out, Gabriel couldn't help himself and he kind of went forward in time to see it, so he knows what happens."
"Which means that he knows it, too," Lucifer added, stepping up behind the kid.
Sam let a slight frown cross his face. "I don't particularly mind spoilers, but I wouldn't mention anything around Dean," he warned. "He probably wouldn't hesitate to shove certain things in certain places for ruining a movie like that."
"I know, I was just trying to get your attention," Gabriel said with a shrug.
"To be fair, you were brooding and oblivious to the world," Lucifer inputted, tagging on to the kid's words again. This time he also pointed a finger at Sam.
Sam looked at the finger being pointed at him and felt his frown deepen. He then let out a sigh, releasing any of his frustrations as best he could. "Well? What did you want?"
"Huh?" Gabriel blinked at him. "I didn't want anything. You were just being kind of weird, standing silently and broody outside the door and everything."
"So you threatened spoilers upon me to... do what exactly?" Sam asked exasperatedly.
Gabriel shrugged again. "Dunno yet. I was thinking of asking about Ms. Eileen again, but it's a bit on the nose now. Though, I do still think that you should take her to—"
The kid's jaw dropped as Lucifer whispered something in his ear, a devious smirk spreading across the latter's face as a blush bloomed in bright red on the former. Gabriel promptly slapped his hands over his ears, and Lucifer let out a full body laugh. He was kicked in the shin for it.
"Innocent ears, you vulgar creature!" the boy cried, shaking his head as if that would help to get rid of the suggestion, whatever it had been.
Rubbing a hand over the sore spot on his leg, Lucifer set his other hand on Gabriel's shoulder. "Oh, please. Gabriel's said far more lewd things than that. Dean has too at some point, and I'm sure Sam could come up with some nasty phrases as well."
If they were talking about what Sam thought they were talking about… then Lucifer probably wasn't wrong. Still, he'd rather not be thinking about that right now. This somehow lead to his mind veering off onto a sidetrack about how much Gabriel Bennett had influenced Gabriel the archangel's… prolific activities – or rather, lack thereof. Huh… that actually made some sense now that Sam thought about it.
"—really know though. Sam? Hello?"
Right. He was still supposed to be engaged in the conversation. "Um, could you repeat that?"
Gabriel rolled his eyes, smacking Lucifer in the abdomen when he let out a snort of amusement. "I was asking if you wanted me and Lucifer to cover for you while you took Miss Eileen out somewhere nice for Valentine's Day," he explained.
"You would do that?" Sam asked, not even bothering to mask his confusion.
Though, to be fair, it really shouldn't have surprised him. The kid had brought the topic up in the Impala, even mentioning that the archangel already had getaway plans for Sam and Eileen. Of course, Sam had no idea what those plans had been and it wasn't like Gabriel could do anything special now, but that the kid was offering to help keep Dean off his back was kind of touching.
"That'd actually be pretty nice," Sam admitted. "What are you planning to say as an excuse?"
Gabriel waved a flippant hand. "I would go with a hunt, but it's not like that'd fly with the fourteenth coming up. So… semi-truth: you went on a vacation."
"And if you happened to stay away for a bit longer after Valentine's in a nice and relaxing setting, then really it's not lying at all," Lucifer pointed out. "Besides, I hear the Caribbean is nice around this time of the year.
That was it. Sam couldn't help it. He had to ask. "What exactly did Gabriel plan for me and Eileen? You guys have clearly been thinking this out for a while."
"Come on, Sam. You can't figure it out? Cruises are nice, and the chances of a malcontent supernatural creature being on the same one as you two are slim to none. Plus, there are… safeguards that keep those kinds of crowds from even getting onto such cruises in the first place—"
"What Lucifer is trying to say is that it'll be perfectly fine," Gabriel interrupted, shoving a hand over Lucifer's mouth. "Gabriel has had this planned out for weeks, even took care of all the expenses and ID stuff. I can't exactly fly you to the port, but if you go and get Eileen now, you could definitely make it before the cruise ship leaves."
That was not what Sam had been expecting. Just… wow. "That's really nice of you guys," he finally managed to get out. All thoughts from earlier were firmly pushed out of his mind. "Thanks."
Gabriel gave him a brilliant smile. "You're welcome, Sam."
~o-O-o~
"So Sam is where?"
"Sam is on vacation."
"And I didn't get to go?"
"No, Dean, you're going on a different one."
"I am?"
"Yup."
"Where?"
A phone was passed over. The location pulled up on the screen had Dean's eyebrows rising to meet his hairline.
"Pensacola, Florida?"
"Beach, Dean. Pensacola Beach. It'll be a bit chilly 'cause it's still February, but it's still a beach in Florida. Lots of sun and sand and college girls on break."
"Say no more, kid."
~o-O-o~
Lucifer turned the page of his current book as Castiel strode into the library. With Sam and Dean out of the Bunker, the angel had little to do. It wasn't that he couldn't leave, but at the same time, Castiel was inclined to stay – especially if it meant keeping help on hand in the Bunker with Gabriel and Lucifer the way they were.
"You're looking considerably better," the angel commented, clearing some books off of an empty table and putting them back on the shelves.
"You're not wrong," Lucifer replied.
And Castiel truly wasn't. Lucifer did look better. The dark circles under his eyes had faded, and he'd regained a bit of color since Gabriel was able to lure him out of the Bunker. He was eating more, too. Overall, he was far more healthy than he had been in a while.
Lucifer turned another page of his book – The Mysterious Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde. "Is something bothering you, Castiel?"
"I'd rather Sam and Dean be here before going over the specifics," the angel said after a moment.
"Then it can wait."
Castiel frowned. "It involves Gabriel— both of them."
Lucifer paused in the middle of turning to the next page. After a moment of his own, he set the book down and finally looked at Castiel for the first time since the angel walked into the room. "Explain."
~o-O-o~
Something was stirring.
All of the greater powers could feel it.
It wasn't a good thing, nor was it a bad thing. It simply was.
And though it did not strike fear into the hearts of those who knew it was coming, it did not bring them joy either. Some were indifferent; most were wary; a few anticipated its arrival.
The universe called for it. Fate wove paths together for it.
It was not a person, nor being or creature that had a soul or lived. It was an event, an occurrence that had been foretold long ago.
It had been thwarted once – naught eight years past – because of death and imprisonment, but the revival of one meant the coming of the others. For in this universe, those who were dead didn't tend to stay that way, and those locked away were often set free.
Something was stirring.
It had taken eight years for the universe to correct itself. It was coming, and the universe rejoiced.
After all, never before had all four archangels walked upon the Earth. Not all at once anyways.
A/N: Definitely shorter than usual. Oh, well. I took out a part that's going into the next chapter instead of here.
Last edited: [August 12, 2018]
teabrows: Splendid deductions. We'll see if you've got it all down to a T. It'll be a while before this ends, lol.