After weeks upon weeks of having their plans pushed to the side, the plans they had made a month in advance, the naturally happy messenger finally met the end of his ever lengthy temper. Nearly a month and a half since the date they were supposed to spend some good quality time together, and having those plans pushed to the next weekend (and the next and the next and the next), for the favor of spending time with those pagans, he finally lost it.

Now, he wasn't meaning to sound selfish, he knew that his master hadn't gotten to spend much time with his pagan children, and he was happy that they were able to get together like they did after such a long time. But what annoyed him was making plans on a date he knew he already had plans on.

The messenger took it, grit his teeth as he was told constantly that they'd get together the following weekend, every weekend that followed, and nodded along to it.

So catching him with his fleabag son nearly a month and a half after the day they had originally planned on getting together to spend the day with one another, his temper finally snapped.

"Why don't you just go live with them!" he snapped at long last. "You clearly prefer them over your own flock!"

Gabriel blinked in surprise at the unusual outburst from the excitable messenger.

"I mean, none of us thought you'd stay this long anyway, and we sure as hell didn't think that would be the last time you abandoned us!" he jabbed an accusatory finger at the Messenger. "So just go! We survived last time! No thanks to you!"

"Zaveriel—" The Messenger stared at him in shock.

"So just go!" the younger messenger waved a hand in dismissal. "None of us will stop you! If you don't care enough to be with us, then why should we care enough to stay with you!"

Again, the Messenger blinked in the shock of it all, it was rare for his excitable Captain to get so irritated. "Zaveriel—"

He watched with wide eyes as the messenger reached heatedly for his hand, tore a ring off his finger, and threw it down on his desk in a rather heated fit of anger.

"I never should have trusted you! I was a fool to believe your word meant anything!" his Principality Captain stepped back. "I revoke my title of messenger! I refuse to serve under your command! Go ahead and leave, it's all your good at!" and he turned to storm out of the office in fuming silence.

He stood quickly as he retreated, meaning to call out, but he had disappeared before he got the chance to. Instead, it left the office in an uncomfortable silence, as he looked down at the ring that had been thrown so angrily on his desk. Gabriel picked it up delicately, holding it between two fingers, he blinked in surprise, and closed it in a fist.

"Fen?" his pagan son looked up at him at the call of his name. "We'll get together another day, kiddo, I have something I need to take care of today."

"That's fine, father, I will talk to you at a better time."

…

"What did you do?"

That was not the greeting he was expecting when he entered his brothers Infirmary, knowing that the first place his runaway Captain would go was to his older brother, Raphael was still one of the few that the young messenger trusted without question. There was no doubt that he would have come to the Healer after his unusual outburst.

Gabriel ignored the inquiry from the older archangel. "Do you know where Zaves is?"

They fell into step. "I do." The older archangel nodded. "Do you?"

"Raph." He glared at his older brother. "I'm so not in the mood."

"Oh, I can imagine so." Raphael came to a halt, and with him the Messenger came to one too, turning to look down at him. "From what I heard of it, it was quite an extraordinary outburst, he was rather heated at you."

"Would you just tell me where he is, please?" The Messenger huffed in irritation. "Spare me the lecture."

The Healer narrowed his eyes slightly in warning, but nodded to the request, if Gabriel thought he was the one with the right to be angry then he'd spare him the lecture as he requested.

"Very well, I'll 'spare you the lecture' as you put it." He crossed his arms over his chest and stood to his full height. "Zaveriel requested to come back to my flock, and without hesitation, I granted his request." The older archangel leaned forward. "Therefore, you have no right to question me on his whereabouts, I am his master now, and as you are no longer his master you don't need to be privy to that information."

"He…He wouldn't leave me like that."

Raphael raised an eyebrow, gesturing to the ring he held in his hand. "I believe he has." He hummed lightly. "You truly have no idea how lucky you were."

His younger brother gave him a confused glance, not understanding what he meant by that, so he elaborated.

"This isn't the first time he's come to me with that request." He nodded at the younger archangels surprise. "Oh, indeed, it's not the second time either." He held up three fingers. "It's the third, and this time I could think of nothing for me to say to talk him out of it, so I accepted."

He turned to walk away, as though that was the end of the conversation, but his younger brother took hold of his arm and yanked him back around. The older brother looked down at the hand curled around his arm, and then to the owner of it. "If you don't want to feel my anger then I suggest you remove your hand."

"Tell me where he is."

"I already told you, you don't have that right anymore, he is under my command thus I am the only one who needs to know his whereabouts."

"I'm not in the mood, brother."

Raphael smacked the hand from his arm. "I don't very much care what mood you are in." The Healer was not easy to anger, but the Messenger had managed it, anyone who harmed those he cared deeply about could manage it, and Gabriel had broken the young angels heart too many times for him to let it slip by this time. "You are a fool."

He pointed a finger in the Messengers face. "Zaveriel is much more resilient then you could ever hope to be. You left him once, in the dark of the night, with no word and a flock to run. He nearly fell apart, but he pulled himself together to lead your flock. He came to me after your return requesting to be accepted back into my flock, and I, being your kind older brother, talked him into staying under your command." When he took a step forward, the Messenger took one back, going cross-eyed at the finger in his face. "He barely began to trust you once more, when you left him again, no word, no warning, nothing but silence. This time he did break down. He destroyed your office. I was the one to come for him. I was the one to hold him until he sobbed himself into unconsciousness. I was the one who cared for him in the days following when he fell into a depression. I was the one who led your abandoned flock. And, I was the one to convince him to give you another chance."

Gabriel stared at his older brother in awe. It was rare for the passive Healer to lose his composure.

His older brother glared at him. "He doesn't trust you. Not after you promise to stay and inevitably leave again." He jabbed him harshly in the chest. "The two of you were meant to get together nearly two months ago to spend time together. It had been planned well in advance."

He tried to defend himself. "I was spending time with my kids!"

"And that's nothing to be faulted for." The Healer shook his head. "But making plans for a date you know you already had plans on, is. And to continuously promise to do so the following weekend and come back with the same end every time is something to be faulted for. Continuously pushing aside someone who already doesn't trust you is causing more damage than can be fixed, Gabriel."

Raphael took a deep breath to try and reign in his temper once more. "So, I ran out of reasons to give in my attempts to convince him to give you another chance, and this time when he asked, I granted his request." He sighed sadly. "You lost nearly two thirds of your flock because of your second time leaving them. And even then, I convinced him to stay. I would have thought you would have learned to care more for your flock."

"I do care for my flock!"

"Clearly not enough!" the Healer waved his hand in the direction of the Aerie. "Or you wouldn't have one-third of your flock left under your command!"

"I made a mistake!"

"No." his older brother's hand cut through the air in a slicing motion. "A mistake is only one occurrence. What you did was a failure. You failed your flock the second you left, again, without a single word." His eyes were sharp as the older archangel looked down to the younger. "Gabriel, I can't be angry at you for wanting to spend time with your children, but I can be angry when you turn your back on your flock. And that's what you did, you turned your back on Zaves, and he got tired of it. He held onto your word of 'next weekend' for nearly two months to have his hopes destroyed every weekend for two months."

Raphael glanced him over entirely. "So, I granted his request. And it's a grant that I won't rescind. Unlike you, I take care of my flock, I care for them, thus they trust me." He started to turn away to return to walking through his patients. "I care for those of other flocks. They trust me. I put their needs and hearts above my own." He stopped a moment more, sparing him a glance over his shoulder, in preparation to leave the Messenger as he had wanted to be-. "And when I promise to spend time with them, I keep my promise. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a broken heart to mend." -Alone.