Chapter 15

Fool Myself

Lucifer watched Gabriel with a careful eye – all the while, not even close to giving away what he was doing. At the base of his reasoning for the constant surveillance, there was concern, worry. That was usually what motivated Lucifer when something decidedly not-good centered around Gabriel (both of them). Otherwise, such surveillance was because of simple fondness.

Though at the moment, if Lucifer was being completely honest with himself, the surveillance he was currently conducting was a bit of both. It wasn't often that Gabriel Bennett played trumpet after all. The trumpet had been found in one of the storage rooms, and it had been well taken care of. And since neither Castiel nor Gabriel had sensed anything particularly special or magical about the musical instrument, Gabriel had brought it to the library and started playing.

Apparently, the trumpet was still in tune after being put away for decades on end. Gabriel buzzed a few notes and the breezed through several scales before playing several different theme songs – some of which Lucifer recognized from Star Wars, Marvel's Avengers, Star Trek, a DCI marching band show from last year… and was that..? Yup, that was the trumpet solo from "Ashes of Time" by Audiomachine.

"You nerd," he teased as Gabriel set the trumpet down on his lap to search for another piece of music to play.

The brief comment made Gabriel pause. It took a moment, but the scrunched expression came out in full force as soon as the two words registered. "Nerd?" the boy repeated incredulously. "I thought we talked about this. It's nerd and geek."

"Yeah, yeah, but I wasn't actually paying attention—" Lie. "—at that point because abstract human concepts bore me. Probably because I don't understand them half the time, but whatever. You nerd."

Gabriel made a face – a rather adorable one that completely ruined the annoyed emotion it was meant to convey. "Was there a point in your grab at my attention?" he asked, scrolling through a few more musical pieces, still searching but not finding.

"Maybe…" Lucifer replied, drawing out the word to pique Gabriel's interest.

It worked of course. The boy looked up from his phone and cast a long glance in Lucifer's direction. A subtle curiosity shone in those rich brown eyes. Lucifer grinned at the subsequent frown.

"Lucifer."

"Gabriel."

Mildly frustrated, the boy huffed, knowing he wasn't getting anywhere. "Anything you'd like me to play?"

"Well, that wasn't what I wanted, but something fancy wouldn't be remiss—"

"Who called whom a nerd?" the boy muttered.

"—or you could do a bit from that game of yours. You know, the one where you don't really learn to be a wizard or whatever but go rescue the Spiral on a daily basis and run errands for NPCs who don't know how to do anything for themselves."

Gabriel sighed, but rather than picking a fight, he simply put the mouthpiece of this trumpet to his lips and started playing a few notes before actually piecing together a melody from the game. It was upbeat and lively, if not a bit 'magical'. Of course, given the premise and targeted younger audience of the game, it made sense that the musical themes would match. Then again, later parts of the game got a bit… darker, which (again) made sense since the higher level players were all older – mostly teenagers and some adults from what Lucifer could tell.

By the time the boy had set the trumpet down again, Lucifer had decided that he really was going to tell him. Up until then, the timing just hadn't been… appropriate (it still wasn't). Just— when was it a good time to tell Gabriel that there were some glaring problems that were inevitably coming their way? Lucifer didn't want to spoil the peace they'd just gotten back.

Peace was such a relative term.

"What's wrong?"

Lucifer almost startled at the soft question in the back of his mind. It was easy to forget, sometimes, that he was cut off from his grace, not the other way around. And it had surprised him the first time that the boy spoke to him over the bond, which he'd thought wouldn't work with how his grace was locked away. But Gabriel was always full of surprises – he should have at least suspected something like this.

After all, his grace was still there… just inaccessible to him. That didn't mean that there wasn't some things that his grace didn't naturally do, no matter how cut off from it he was. And so, while Lucifer could hear things and feel impressions from the boy over that bond between them, he couldn't respond back, not in the same way.

"Just another, uh, nightmare… from last night. Nothing major," Lucifer assured, still trying to come up with a way to bring that up even as Gabriel went from playing a whimsical march to something closer to a ballad. Lucifer felt a faint impression of concern from the boy, and he meet Gabriel's eyes. "I'm fine— better. Getting there, anyway."

Lucifer wasn't quite sure which was worse: spending those first few weeks with his little brother or having to keep himself in check around the boy. He knew that there wasn't really a difference between what the two personalities remembered, but Lucifer couldn't help but try a little harder to be normal around the boy. He didn't want to worry him so much.

The tempo slowed a bit more – definitely a ballad. The notes climbed up and down, arranged in musical patterns that swelled with feeling and quieted into soft whispers, all building up to the climax. Lucifer could almost hear a symphony playing underneath it all.

"If only I could sing as well as I play," the boy mused, climbing down into a decrescendo before finally stopping.

"We both know I was the choir boy," Lucifer huffed, fiddling with the phone he hadn't really been paying attention to for the past hour. "You stick to the brass."

Gabriel was already rolling his eyes by the end of the sentence. "You're jealous that I can play pretty much everything now."

"Just because at least one of all your past lives learned how to play each instrument there ever was does not mean that you, Gabriel Bennett, know how to play them all," Lucifer refuted.

"Giovanni protests otherwise."

"I don't care if that Italian's job was to teach others how to play things during the Renaissance or that he was beyond talented in the musical arts. He didn't teach you."

Gabriel grumbled something inaudible in his past life's defense. Then: "When Sam gets back, I'm telling him that you don't sing as well as you used to."

"Don't you dare—" Lucifer started.

Gabriel grinned. "Or you'll do what?" he dared. "You don't have dirt on me."

"Oh, but I have all kinds of blackmail on a little brother of mine," Lucifer responded with a grin of his own. "Who do you think came up with the platypus and giraffe? Certainly not Chuck."

"And who exactly made penguins a thing?"

"Penguins are beautiful and majestic creatures!"

"I know they are, but He didn't know about them until you pissed Michael off enough to where he almost melted the ice caps for the first time," Gabriel pointed out, amber flecks shining against the brown.

"So?" Lucifer grumbled. "Dad liked them."

"He didn't like the way sharks have so many teeth!"

"They lose like nineteen teeth a week, so I figured they might as well have more!"

"That— that doesn't make any sense… By giving them more teeth, they have more teeth to lose."

"Then why did it make sense for you to give elephants trunks?"

"I don't know! They looked stupid with those stubby little noses and giant-ass ears— something had to match."

Lucifer shook his head, leaning back in his chair and looking upwards. "No wonder Dad avoided us while He was making everything. We were already messing around with His stuff."

"Who'da thunk it?" Gabriel teased, amber spreading a little more. "He still loved us though."

"Yeah…" Lucifer sighed.

He wasn't oblivious to the current blend of the boy and the archangel's personalities. The eye color was a dead giveaway. Whoever said that the eyes were the window to the soul wasn't wrong. This was, perhaps, the closest the archangel had been to consciousness – or at least, been this aware of what was going on.

It was now or never.

"Hey, Gabriel?"

The boy looked up from where he was putting the trumpet back into its case. Last chance to turn back. Lucifer went in for the metaphorical kill… albeit in a roundabout way.

"Do you ever want to, well, go back?"

The bemused look is far more archangel than human, especially with the slight head tilt. "Back? What— to Heaven?" Amber-brown eyes narrowed. "I left for a reason. You know that, Lucifer."

This… was not going to be easy. (What the hell ever gave him that impression?) "Well, I mean— don't ever want to… I dunno, check up on them?" he tried (and definitely failed) to be casual with his question.

Gabriel actually paused to consider his answer. Then: "I've been reliably informed that Heaven is doing 'not bad' given everything that's happened over the last decade."

"And when did you hear this?"

"A little over a month ago," Gabriel answered slowly, suspicion plain on his face. "Why?"

Lucifer barely held back a deflective shrug. Wording. Wording is key, he reminded himself. "Something… came up— right before we sent Sam and Dean on vacation. Castiel thought it could wait…"

Gabriel easily picked up where Lucifer trailed off. "But you think it's more time sensitive. What is it that has you on edge?" he asked, getting right to the point – hundreds of theories, ideas, conclusions being drawn, weighed and dismissed in mere seconds. All only noticeable through a faint feeling over the bond.

"It's not about Crowley. I made all sorts of contingency plans and more for that," Gabriel continued when Lucifer didn't answer. His eyes were looking more amber than brown now, a shade of gold just behind it all. "So obviously it has to do with Heaven; otherwise you wouldn't have brought it up. Now, what is it?"

Lucifer sighed, working his jaw. Getting up, he moved over to where Castiel had hidden the decrypted translation. If Gabriel was getting this worked up about it, he may as well see it for himself. Lucifer certainly wasn't going to stop him.

Gabriel read over the notes three times before looking back up to Lucifer. "How much do you trust this?" he asked in a demanding tone, waving the papers in the air.

"You're welcome to get Castiel to show you the source materials," Lucifer drawled, crossing his arms defensively.

"Lucifer, how are you— This could mean—"

"I know what it means, Gabriel," Lucifer interrupted before his little brother could go off on a tirade. That or start hyperventilating. It was looking like the scales would tip either way at the moment. "And I would say that it started last summer."

"… with me."

Gabriel stumbled back into his chair, his head dropping into his hands. Lucifer could feel the archangel shutting down, and he moved to place his own hands on Gabriel's shoulders, eliciting a shudder from the boy's body. Gabriel let out a shaky breath, and his hands gripped at his hair, tugging at the gripped strands in a way that would have been painful for a human.

"Deep breaths, little brother. Deep breaths. Breathe," Lucifer murmured, rubbing soothing circles into Gabriel's shoulders with his thumbs.

To be fair, Gabriel was handling this about as well as Lucifer had when Castiel told him.

On the other hand, it had far worse connotations for Lucifer than it did for Gabriel… Well, it was still pretty bad for both of them. Just more for Lucifer. Then again, it couldn't get much worse for Lucifer at this point. And that was saying something.

Hmm, not the time to be thinking about those sorts of thoughts. Right. Back to matters at hand.

"I— I don't want to go," Gabriel choked out, almost a sob. "I don't want to leave— not because of this."

And it chipped away at Lucifer's heart, hearing that broken voice. He'd heard it from his little brother far too often over the past few months to ever want to hear it from the boy. Because this was the boy now. Gone was the amber and gold from those eyes, leaving only brown – pure, rich, chocolate brown.

Lucifer drew the boy closer, wrapping his arms around him and rubbing those same circles into the hairline at the back of the boy's neck and more just below the point between his shoulder blades. It ached, clawed at his conscience – having to give this comfort to the boy. He shouldn't need to— shouldn't have to give the boy something he shouldn't need. Gabriel should be happy – both of them.

But, Lucifer mused as Gabriel softly cried into his shoulder, happiness was easy to find if one knew what one was looking for. It was keeping that happiness which was the hard part.

~o-O-o~

Ketch was giving him weird looks again. Mick was starting to get fed up with them. There wasn't even anything particularly wrong with the looks if the concerned stares hadn't been coming from a sociopath – a sociopath (borderline psychopath), who for all intents and purposes had taken an interest in Mick.

Mick was still debating whether or not that was a good thing.

On one hand, it was nice to have Ketch of all people being a decent human being around him despite no one else being in the vicinity. On the other hand, it was kind of creepy since whenever they got a call from the home office, Ketch was somewhat… defensive (more protective than possessive) over Mick if even a hint of a threat was directed at him. Again, it was nice, but Mick found it slightly (understatement) disturbing, and he was sure that the Old Men had taken note of the odd behavior.

Mick says odd, but then Ketch wasn't ever really normal. Could a sociopath in their line of work be normal? And really, the only reason Mick knew that Ketch wasn't a psychopath (despite Bevell's arguments otherwise) was because Ketch did express a conscience (his moral code), not to mention genuine emotions. It just wasn't very often or very much when he did.

It wasn't something Mick wanted right now either. Not after having less than three hours of sleep in over four days. Still, it'd be rude to simply avoid Ketch, so Mick would just have to ignore the stares.

He consulted the papers one last time before speaking up. "The Old Men want to know why there's been a sudden decrease in demonic activity here in the States. They know it wasn't us, so they suspect the Winchesters."

"And I'm to interrogate any demon I happen to come across for conformation?" Ketch asked, completely at ease as he cleaned his personal arsenal of pistols on the main conference table in front of Mick.

"You don't have a problem with your assignment, do you, Mr. Ketch?"

Ketch paused to glance at Mick before continuing what he was doing. "None at all. It may take a bit longer than usual though," he responded somewhat dismissively.

"Oh?" Mick inquired wordlessly.

"Knowing you, you'd rather not know."

"Of course." Because that was essentially code for Ketch isn't going to stop 'interrogating' demons until he's satisfied his… urges.

Mick's co-worker wouldn't be leaving until tomorrow morning, and Mick didn't particularly care to know where Ketch was going for his first interrogatee. He especially didn't want to know what Ketch was going to do to the demons he questioned (such a neutral term for torture).

Ketch, of course, knew this – as he had told Mick. And, really, Mick would love to know just how Ketch understood Mick more than Mick understood himself.

~o-O-o~

Kemuel was back in Heaven for the first time in several months. All of the angels who wanted to come home were here, and those who had wished to stay on Earth had been told to stay in touch. The ones who had posed a threat to either Heaven or Earth were simply eliminated. Nothing could have been done for them. Kemuel didn't exactly feel a deep sorrow for the loss, but the dwindling number of angels did concern her. It had concerned Joshua a significant deal more.

And while the small number of twenty odd angels in Heaven had once scared Kemuel, it didn't anymore. Not while she was here. Oh, she herself was rather troubling, but the fact that she was intent to stay in Heaven was quite literally a godsend.

Heaven simply couldn't run on only twenty angels. However, having an archangel to help power everything up here… well, it was unburdening to say the least.

Joshua had been reasonably wary of Raphael's resurrection. Kemuel hadn't even found out until a month after the archangel's sudden reappearance, when Kemuel had returned to the playground for a scheduled check-in. Instead of being greeted by Joshua, Dumah had hurriedly informed Kemuel of Raphael's presence before telling her Joshua's request to quickly finish her business on Earth. That had been almost two weeks ago.

Now, Kemuel walked through Heaven's white and gray corridors to where Joshua usually hosted meetings, her thoughts tumult and chaotic in her concerned agitation. She had been ready for a fight when she had stepped through the portal into Heaven, but already she could see the subtle differences that having an archangel in Heaven had made.

It was… brighter. The walls themselves seemed to glow with new life. It was almost as if Heaven had been in the midst of a drought and Raphael was a rainstorm, giving the land fresh water, giving them a chance for growth once more.

Except, the number of angels was still only twenty (just over thirty, if one counted the angels who chose Earth over Heaven), and that number could only go down, not up.

"My, my… If it isn't Gabriel's favorite pet angel," Raphael's voice drawled from the meeting room.

Kemuel hadn't even stepped inside, still several feet away from even reaching the door. A faint murmuring met her ears – Joshua? Surely he hadn't just rolled over and given Heaven to the archangel in a sudden desperation to save it. (But Kemuel knew he would do that. Heaven was too important to hold on to something like pride.)

"There's no need to insult one of your only links to Earth, sir," Kemuel bit out pointedly as she passed through the doorway and came to stand in front of the archangel.

Raphael was seated in what Kemuel supposed was a makeshift throne – not that it was particularly noteworthy. Joshua stood a little ways off to the archangel's left, and Dumah escorted two of the others out before the spat (which was obviously bound to occur) would start.

At Kemuel's comment, Raphael merely grinned, her white teeth shining against the room's bright glow. "Then there should be no need for that sort of attitude."

"I was only returning the courtesy."

Kemuel tried not to let it show – how Raphael's unhidden amusement unnerved her. "Is that how you treat my brothers?" the archangel asked.

"Since I never really met the others and I happen to like Gabriel, no," Kemuel retorted. "How are you alive, Raphael?" she demanded.

Because she could do that: demand an explanation. It was her right – she wasn't some mindless drone for an archangel to swoop in and order around like the hierarchy had never crumbled. The archangels didn't hold that kind of power here anymore. And she'd be damned if she was going to just let Raphael take over.

"That's the big question, isn't it?" the archangel mused. "Oh, don't look at me like that. I'll tell you. And then you can go report back to Gabriel and Lucifer like the good little pet you are."

A/N: So, yeah, Raphael's a bit of a snob (but maybe not all is as it seems?). And, yes, I'm having her portrayed as a she. No particular reason besides Raphael's last vessel being a woman. And aren't I a cruel person for putting so much fluff and angst all in one chapter? Anyways, we're steadily making our way up to that next peak of a plot arc~ I hope you guys are ready!

Last edited: [August 12, 2018]

teabrows: Yes, I do like my drama. Is this enough for your next high?