The door opened and there stood Amara. She was holding something swaddled in a blanket, but none of the archangels could tell exactly what it was.
"Auntie Ama?" Mikha mumbled sleepily, yawning.
"May I come in?" she asked. "I found something in His house that never belonged there."
Raphael nodded with a quick glance at the sleeping Sam. It did not seem that anything could or would wake him.
Hopefully with Him being gone, Sam would get to sleep without his visions and nightmares tormenting him. He deserved it, after everything that he had done for their family, especially Michael and Lucifer. If there was one thing that Raphael was most curious about when it came to Sam, it was likely by what instinct he had known that the archangels were pregnant.
Amara stepped into the room and carefully closed the door. She made sure it didn't slam behind her, as she did not want to wake those who most needed their sleep.
"What did you find?" Raphael asked, moving around the bed so that he could get a closer look at whatever precious cargo Amara had brought with her from where He had been living on Earth.
The Goddess held out her bundle towards Raphael, once he had stepped close enough for her to reach. "I would call him Ismael," she said.
Raphael shifted the bundle, and discovered that Amara had found a baby. Not just any baby though, because as he shifted the blanket away from the child's back he was able to see faint wings pressed tightly against the child's back in such a way that could not have been comfortable. Yet, it didn't seem to him that the fault was in the blanket or the swaddling, but rather that the child had either conciously, or unconsciously, pressed the wings as close to himself as he was capable of doing.
He very carefully reached to touch the grace of the small child, but he watched Ismael's face, so that he could pull back if this was going to wake him. Before pulling his grace back, he was able to tell that this fledgling was a child of angels, not a nephilim, or an angel that He had created himself, which was almost worse.
Who had borne this fledgling? Did they remember that their child was missing? How had Ismael ended up with Him? What had He done to him?
"Rafa?"
Raphael turned around. Mikha had asked the question, but Heylel was also staring at him.
"I wonder if Sam and Sami have been sharing dreams about the dark things this little one has had to endure," Raphael found himself saying. It made a sickening amount of sense that it might be the case. Sam had been plagued by dreams about the suffering of innocents before, he understood, and it seemed that Sami was also possibly coming into powers as an empath, which also explained why he had been so upset over the dreams he'd been having, if it had been as bad for the child as he suspected it could have been.
"Can I see him?" Mikha asked, more sedately than Raphael was used to hearing from the eldest of them being very often.
Raphael walked back around the bed so that he could sit beside Mikha on the bed and pass the infant to him, keeping a hand underneath Ismael in case Mikha didn't have the strength to hold him for an extended period of time.
The child seemed to fall into even deeper sleep, as Mikha snuggled him closer. Raphael found himself letting go of Ismael as Mikha leaned back against the pillows and yawned. Perhaps holding something so small and innocent would help him settle down and get his own much needed rest.
Talia was still in the big nest with the rest of their siblings minus Castiel, but it was possible that her presence would help soothe her parents, now that everything was supposed to be both calmer and safer. He wanted to examine Ismael for injuries first, though. It was also not unlikely that he would be overwhelmed if he was introduced to everyone at once. But first it would need to be determined how far along he was developmentally. He was certainly larger than a newborn, but he couldn't begin to guess at how old he was, or whether or not He might have tried to intentionally hinder him.
"I'm going to go check on the others," Raphael decided. The effects of what Mikha had done had seemed to affect Mikha the most, but he wanted to make sure that everyone else was okay, especially Gabriel's fosterlings that had almost been caught in the backlash.
He slipped past Amara and headed for the big nest, where he expected everyone else to still be resting. Upon arriving, he found about what he was expecting to find.
Gabriel and the three fosterlings were sitting in the far corner of the room. They were silent, unless Gabriel had used some kind of area silencing spell so as not to disturb anyone else in the room. The fosterlings were shaking, and Gabriel seemed to be offering them some comfort.
Samael was holding Talia, who was sleeping, and he was sitting on the floor next to Aziraphale, who was playing peak-a-boo with Samandriel. It seemed that they were pretty good at distracting the fledgling from things going on around him, but it made Raphael wonder if perhaps they should get to work on private warded rooms so that there was less likeliness of needing to go to further efforts to hide things from the children.
Gabriel and Sam would need a private room for sure. His understanding of the humans the youngest archangels had chosen for their own, they'd never had permanent homes on Earth, so having private bedrooms in Heaven was the least that they deserved. A nice bedroom for Sam and Gabriel, where he could make a permanent bed with at least some of the nice bedding he had been gifted by the rest of the archangels.
He wanted to meet the fosterlings, but Raphael also didn't want to interrupt whatever was going on between them and Gabriel, so he allowed himself to check on Sami first.
"Rafa! Rafa!" Sami shouted, giggling as Raphael flitted over and scooped the child up off the floor. There was something about the innocent joy that fledglings exuded from their entire beings. It didn't matter that Sami was thousands of years old and should have been full grown several times over, what mattered was that he was Raphael's innocent child and his entire being desired to protect and keep him happy.
"Raphael?" Gabriel called from the other side of the room. It either disproved Raphael's idea that he'd used his grace to silence the area, or he'd removed it, though it wasn't relevant. "Could you come here for a second?"
Raphael put Samandriel down in Aziraphale's lap before walking over to Gabriel to see what the situation was. He knelt so that he would not scare them by being too tall.
"These are three of my fosterlings. Raphael, meet Hela, Fenrir, and Jormungandr."
"Hello," Raphael greeted, stiffly. He wasn't sure why Gabriel had called him over, and the way he had done so seemed almost out of character for him.
The fosterlings nodded awkwardly, as if they weren't certain as to what else to do.
"My brother is a Healer," Gabriel said, gently, clearly addressing the fosterlings and not him. "Would you allow him to give you each a once over? I just want to make sure you're all okay."
"He didn't hurt us, Dad," the girl said quietly. "Not physically."
"Why were you there?" Gabriel asked, and his tone seemed to come across almost as desperate for some answer.
"We heard about a missing fledgling, one that was stolen," one of the boys started, looking away from Gabriel. "We wanted to try and find them, to see if we could try and bring them home, and maybe afterwards try to apologize to Sam for what happened at the party."
Gabriel sighed, and Raphael could see the remaining fear covering his brother's face. "And you didn't think to ask for help, at any point? Fen, you and your siblings could have been killed . How am I supposed to explain that to the twins?" He shook his head. "How did you even manage to track the fledgling there? None of us could even sense it."
"Magic," the girl, Hela, answered. "I used blood magic to scry for angelic blood of your blood."
Raphael wasn't sure what that was, except that it didn't sound right. Or safe. "Wouldn't that have revealed all angels or humans of nephilim blood located in the geographical location you searched?"
She shook her head. "I invoked Gabriel's aspect as archangel of Pagan Fosterlings, so it only revealed children, and second generation nephilim and beyond wouldn't have enough magic to show up with the spell I used, so there were only two in all of the United States. The child plaguing Sam's nightmares, and the antichrist in Nebraska."
He blinked. "I'm sorry, Antichrist?"
Gabriel shook his head. "I'll explain later." Turning back to the fosterlings, he continued. "But why didn't you try to ask one of us for help? You know that you can always ask me for anything, no matter what's going on, I thought that I'd made that more than clear when you were kids."
The third child, though Raphael decided that all three were probably much older than they appeared, scratched at his pant leg, and said, "You've been so busy taking care of Sam, I wanted to do something for you." He didn't look up at Gabriel, focused entirely on his leg.
The first boy, Raphael thought he was called Fenrir, scoffed and rolled his eyes. "You're just a suck up, Jor."
"Fenrir!" Gabriel's tone was sharp, as he stared down the boy. "How many times do I have to tell you not to speak of your siblings that way?"
Fenrir stuck his tongue out at Gabriel, which confused Raphael. It was a childish action, one Sami pulled from time to time, but not so sassily. Then again, Sami also didn't act out for the sake of acting out, so he didn't sass.
"Rafa says we gots to be nice," Samandriel said.
Raphael turned, thinking Sami's voice was drifting from the other side of the room, but he found that his fledgling had escaped from Aziraphale's lap and had crawled across the room to come to him. He picked his child up and set him on his knees.
"That's right," Gabriel cut in before Raphael could think of what to say in response to Sami. The fosterlings were Gabriel's children and responsibility, and it wasn't his place to speak of their behavior. "We have to be nice, Fenrir. Especially when we're being good role models."
Fenrir stared at the baby on Raphael's lap for several long moments and then said, "Yes, Dad. I'm sorry, Jor. I shouldn't have said that."
Leaving it at that, Gabriel said, "Sami, these are my fosterlings, Hela, Jormungandr, and Hela."
"What's 'Fosterlings', Rafa?" Sami asked.
Raphael thought for a moment about how to explain the term in a way that would make sense to Sami. "It means that Gabriel raised them and takes care of them, like how I look after you." He had been parenting Samandriel since he'd smote Naomi, and he hadn't even remembered that Sami was his child . And they hadn't even told Sami the truth.
They'd have to. Sami should have known from the beginning. It wasn't fair to him that Raphael had hid from what had happened, or that he'd trusted Sami's care to anyone else.
"Okay, Rafa," Sami said. He looked back at the fosterlings. "Play with me?"
Fenrir and Jormungandr nodded eagerly and hurried after Sami as he motioned for them to follow him and crawled away. As soon as her brothers were behind Raphael, Hela crawled into Gabriel's lap.
"You alright, Sweetheart?" Gabriel asked, rubbing Hela's back. She shrugged. "Will you let Raphael make sure you're okay? It's non-invasive, and it should take just a few seconds. I know you're probably fine, but just to reassure me?"
After a moment, Hela nodded. Raphael waited, because he wanted verbal consent. Gabriel may have been correct about how it would take only a moment and be non-invasive, but he still wasn't going to do it without verbal permission. She seemed to understand, because after another moment she said, "Okay, go ahead."
Raphael reached forward, and held his hand out to her, palm up. "I'm just going to hold your hand, okay? That's it."
Hela studied his hand, and then put her hers around his fingers.
The connection wasn't only physical, which was why giving the quick examination was almost as easy as the movement of her reaching out. She didn't have grace, or a soul, but she did have the magical essence of all Pagans, though it resembled grace more than an average pagan would have, given the length of time she must have spent in Gabriel's company. He was able to read it like he would have read souls or grace, letting it tell him its hurts.
As she said earlier, she wasn't physically injured, but that didn't mean she was perfectly alright. It did seem to be nothing more than some magical exhaustion and lingering terror, which was to be expected. But even knowing for certain that she wasn't injured was sure to give them both some comfort.
"So, what are the results?" Gabriel asked.
"Clean bill of health," Raphael said. "However, it does look like your magical reserves are a little on the low side, but that's nothing a nap and maybe a few days of rest won't cure." 'She's also still terrified, but I don't think she'd appreciate me saying that aloud. I imagine her sitting there will help with that, though?'
Gabriel tilted his head just enough for Raphael to know that he was agreeing. He ran his hand down Hela's back again. "I think that sounds like a good idea."
Hela shifted, but Raphael noticed how she hadn't let go of his hand yet. "I-"
"Have things to do that really can't wait a few days?" Gabriel gestured to where her brothers were playing with Samandriel. "Do you really want to drag them back to Earth, right now? They'd all be unbearable." He rubbed small circles into her shoulder. "You deserve a few days to rest, and I would love it if you all stayed."
Hela withdrew her hand from around Raphael's, and rested it between her head and Gabriel's knee. She yawned. "I suppose it wouldn't hurt anything."
The girl was asleep between one breath and the next.
Gabriel smiled. "Now if only all her brothers were as easy as this one."