As an Archangel, Gabriel has never felt fear.
Demons posed a threat, or at least they would have if Armageddon had gone through as planned, but other than the occasional run in with a demon, angels did not have much to fear apart from Falling. Gabriel was an Archangel, though, and he did not worry about Falling. He never betrayed God, not like those who were cast out of Heaven, and certainly not like Aziraphale.
Archangels don't have much emotion regarding other angels, save for occasional disappointment at failed tasks, but Gabriel has been Aziraphale's direct superior for 6000 years. The angel stationed on Earth, isolated down there, was a disappointment on occasion. Aziraphale was an anomaly, Gabriel thinks, and right from the start he'd made some questionable choices.
Perhaps it is not surprise Aziraphale became tainted with… humanity. The word alone leaves Gabriel frowning, a deep-seeded sense of disgust burning through him momentarily. Angels don't have feelings like humans, as they are more controlled than that and feeling such things is obviously beneath them, but if Gabriel did have feelings about something, it was about Aziraphale's dissent into what should have been a Fallen Angel.
Yet, somehow, Aziraphale has not Fallen.
He survived a spout of hellfire, too, and Gabriel still doesn't know how he managed that one. Certainly it wasn't God intervening; what did She care about a middling angel who kept disobeying and rebelling against all her plans? She'd cast out Lucifer for the same things, after all; so surely she wouldn't have intervened on Aziraphale's behalf.
No, he survived some other way. Gabriel just doesn't know how. Yet.
So he does feel disappointment, and frustration, just like anyone else. Disappointment in Aziraphale for 6000 years as the angel seemed to pull more and more away from Heaven, bending but never outright breaking the rules, and he's been skirting that line for millennia. Frustration, because if he did want anything at all, he wanted to duke it out with the demons. Over 6000 years ago they were cast out but nothing was really settled; he wanted to fight them. They wanted to fight the angels. Armageddon should have been the end of it.
It wasn't.
Because of one disobedient angel.
After that, Gabriel felt anger. It burns hotly inside of him in a way nothing else ever has and it is, perhaps, more confusing than anything, but the feeling is there all the same. And he isn't sure what to do with it. He already tried punishing Aziraphale and it didn't work. It didn't work.
And then God broke Her silence.
For millennia She's been silent, speaking only to the Metatron, leaving Her Archangels to run things. Gabriel is proud to have been one of said Archangels, running Heaven for so long now. Surely if God disapproved of any of their moves, She would have shown Herself and corrected things immediately, so everything was going perfectly according to plan.
At least, that's what they thought.
Gabriel has never felt fear, but as he stands there (in so far as he can stand, at least, in his True Form) frozen and unable to move as God picks away at him little by little, rearranging entire pieces, he's never felt more terrified.
It hurts.
He hasn't felt pain since the Great War as he fought his brethren. Strange, how you can forget how such a thing feels, because this pain, he thinks, is worse.
She's ripping out pieces of his soul, making whatever adjustments She sees fit, and shoving them back in a new place. She isn't unkind about it, of course; She is always kind unless pushed to be something else, but She leaves the pain. She could take it all away if She wanted; could destroy them and start anew, but She doesn't.
She just…
Makes adjustments.
And they're all frozen in place, unable to move, perfectly placid as She does so.
God is angry, and Gabriel is terrified.
xXx
She is angry as She looks at Her Archangels.
They've all become tainted, She thinks, ripping out several sins to observe them.
They have consorted with demons while shunning one of their own for the same thing.
They tried to temp a child toward ending everything.
They fully expected to kill an angel in a hidden area of Heaven.
Oh, how Her angels have fallen from grace.
She toys with the idea of tossing out such sins, cleaning the slate entirely. Each angel will begin anew. What is it humans call it? Oh, yes. A factory reset, to make them work like new.
She doesn't do this.
In the past, She has tried similarly by wiping out areas on Earth when the humans disappointed Her so, and in the end, history merely repeated itself. Those methods don't work.
So She leaves the sins. She leaves the pain. She rearranges but never throws anything out.
She will make do with what She has to work with, She decides, and all will be well.
This would be easier to do if Aziraphale would stop trying to interfere.
Oh, that angel. He is, perhaps, the best of Her angels. He has become Real in a way the others simply have not, and he did it all on his own.
Be kind to everyone, She had spread to the angels and humanity.
Aziraphale was kind to a demon even when God Herself could not tolerate them, but could not find it in Herself to destroy them entirely. She cast them out instead, changed them fundamentality, ripped away her Love and grace and filled them with something bitter and unkind, but even knowing this, Aziraphale was still kind to a demon.
The Right Thing isn't always the Easy Thing, She also spread.
Her Principality had accepted this as well, for his road certainly hadn't been easy but he has saved and preserved so much life despite everything.
Love me, She had also said, but above all else, love humanity, my greatest creation.
Aziraphale sacrificed everything to protect the humans.
She chose correctly when making him a Principality.
He can handle things while She is busy with the other angels.
Someone needs to cover for Her while She is busy rewriting the Heavens, after all.
xXx
Things are afoot.
Hastur likes when things are afoot. It means chaos, it means danger, it means the thrill of a fight.
The fact it involves Heaven and that angel the traitor Crowley seems to fancy, well, that just makes it all the better in his opinion.
He has a score to settle, after all, and what better way than to… what is the human expression? Kill two birds with one stone?
Hell has sensed a fluctuation in power, they said, and it seems centred on this one particular angel. No other angels have been spotted on Earth since Armageddon and there are rumours that the escalator at the Main Entrance to Heaven isn't working.
His job: Snuff out this last angel on Earth.
If this job coincides with his own grudge against Crowley, well, that only helps things, doesn't it?
Crowley took his partner in crime, and now he will take the traitor's.
The only issue, he thinks, is that there are rumours said angel is immune to hellfire.
Oh well.
There's more than one way to kill an angel.