Chapter 7- To Be Or Not To Be A Trickster
I apologize for my hiatus. I've been kinda really busy lately.
Lizzie woke to a knock at her door. Rubbing her eyes, she slipped out from under her blanket and padded across the floor in socked feet.
"Good morning, Elizabeth." Cas' gravelly voice sounded when she opened the door. It was cute how he sounded so knowing. "Do you happen to know where the coffee is? It appears someone has moved things around in the pantry. Of course, that would be understandable, since neither Winchester has the time or patience for organization, and the pantry was quite disheveled."
"Yeah, that was me. It's in the cupboard under the coffee maker, top shelf." Lizzie said with a yawn. "Hey, I thought I told you not to call me Elizabeth," she called as he started walking away. He made a small wave to let her know he had heard her, but didn't respond.
She turned around and closed the door, and found Lucifer inside her room, thumbing through a leather-bound notebook. "Writing new plays, are we? Ooh, this one sounds kinky." He smirked.
"Lucifer, when did your manners sink below Gabe's?" She complained, reaching for the book.
"According to him, when I killed him." Lucifer said cheerily.
"That's a long time ago." Lizzie muttered, rolling her eyes. She made another reach for the notebook, but Lucifer had a couple inches on her, which he used to his advantage.
"Oh, only a few years ago. Is it five now? How time flies." Lucifer said nonchalantly, pulling another book off of Lizzie's nightstand and proceeding to flip through it. "Did you only write the one kinky play? I was enjoying it."
"It's a work in progress," Lizzie replied. "Wait, five years? What?"
"Yeah, five. Point being?" Luci said, moving on to another book in the pile on the nightstand, leaving the old one precariously thrown onto the desk.
"But I thought you already killed Gabe."
"What? Of course not."
Lizzie looked at him sideways. "But, if he wasn't killed before, then does that mean he faked his death?"
Lucifer shrugged, tossing aside a purple-backed notebook. "Wouldn't surprise me. What the hell is this, a nonfiction article on trains?"
"Physics." Lizzie corrected. "So Gabe faked his own death, then you killed him five years ago?"
"Pretty sure. This is boring stuff." He tossed that one onto the bed.
"Pretty sure it was five years ago?"
Lucifer rolled his eyes at the next one, throwing it onto the desk chair. "No, pretty sure I killed him. Liz, have you never heard of porn? I mean come on, where's the Fifty Shades?"
Lizzie huffed. "How could you not know? And no, I'm not writing romanticized rape."
"What? He's a slippery bastard. It's not rape, it's just... Intercourse with little warning and almost consent." Lucifer grinned. "Yuck, this one's in pentameter. Who the hell writes poetry in pentameter anymore? Apparently, all you need to do is just scribble random stuff on a piece of paper, put weird breaks in the sentence structure, and Yahtzee."
"That's not poetry," Lizzie complained. "That's lethargy incarnate."
"Well, I'd have to agree there." Lucifer sighed., grabbing the last notebook off the nightstand. Lizzie's room was now covered in notebooks flung carelessly onto every available surface. "So what, there was a rumour floating around that I killed him before?"
There was another knock on the door, but this time it was more of an irritated banging than Castiel's polite and patient rapping. Lizzie opened it again. It was Dean.
"Dude, could you talk some sense into my baby brother? I think he's lost it." He complained. "Why is Satan in your room?" He commented upon inspecting his view from the hall.
"Oh, Lucifer doesn't seem to like organization, so he's gone on a pilgrimage to bring chaos and destruction to my collection of notebooks." She replied. "Anyway, what's wrong with your brother?"
Dean sighed. "He's trying to drag me to town to see a play. He's gone absolutely nuts."
"Why does he want to go see a play?" Lucifer asked. "He does know her room is full of them, right?"
"I dunno, bonding or some crap." Dean whistled the two-note tune forever associated with mental illness.
"Alright, I'll see what I can do. He's probably smelled the coffee Cassie's making and is sitting in the kitchen." Lizzie grinned at how adorably normal the brothers could seem at times. They reminded her of her own brothers, always bickering in an endearing way.
"I think it's a good idea." Cas said as he set two creamy white coffee cups filled with black coffee down on the kitchen table, one for each Winchester.
"You are kidding, right, Cas?" Dean retorted. "It's a complete waste of time we could spend on a case instead. Y'know, those important things we do to keep people from dying?" He was tapping his fingers along the sides of the cup impatiently.
"Dean, if you keep running yourself like this, you'll collapse. It would be in your best interest to take a break once in a while." Cas replied.
"Yeah, Dean," Sam said. "It would be good for you to chill a bit. Besides, it's a cool play."
"Please don't tell me it's in freakin' pentameter." Dean sighed.
"Okay, I won't." Sam replied with a smug grin.
Dean groaned. "Chuck, kill me now. Are you all on board with this maniacal scheme?"
Cas and Lizzie nodded. Lucifer shrugged. "I wasn't sure at first, but your face has convinced me that it's a great idea."
Dean groaned again and rolled his eyes. "Why is everyone ganging up on me?"
"Mostly because we can't trust you to take care of yourself." Sam replied. "Come on, it won't be that bad. It's a cool play, and you'll probably really like Robin Goodfellow."
"You seriously like this crap?" Dean whispered to Sam, who was sitting beside him in the dim sticky seats of the theatre, actually enjoying the Shakespearean play that was being rudimentarily by the town's locals. Sam shushed him sharply. Dean rolled his eyes.
Sam sighed, evidently agitated. "Just chill, Dean. Please?"
"Either I mistake your shape and making quite,
Or else you are that shrewd and knavish sprite
Call'd Robin Goodfellow; are not you he..."
Dean smacked Sam's arm lightly. "Please tell me I'm just going insane." He whispered pleadingly.
"I wish I could, or we both mistake his shape and making." Sam replied.
"Come on, seriously dude? Shakespeare puns?" Dean rolled his eyes. "You just sucked all the seriousness out of this situation."
Of course, neither of them were insane(well, to the point of hallucination, anyway), and the figure dressed as said sprite was in fact that very familiar, if low-to-the-ground, face, of a certain archangel. Lucifer shrugged and waved, and Lizzie and Cas' eyes went a little wide.
"Thou speak'st aright;
I am that merry wanderer of the night."
"Jesus, I wish I could say that I'm not totally pissed off at seeing him, but I can't." Dean sighed quietly. "Corner him at the back door after this BS is over?" Sam nodded.
Cas, who sat on the other side of Sam leaned forward so as to not bother other viewers as much. "I will also help. This raises interesting queries."
Gabriel walked quietly out of the theatre's rear entrance, the heavy metal door slamming with a ring as it fell shut. Suddenly, he was bowled over by a large figure who pinned him to the ground.
"Hey, there, buddy, long time no see." Dean said as he sauntered over and sank to his haunches in front of Gabriel's face. "What have you been up to lately?" He stuck the barrel of his pistol in the angel's face.
"Hey, Deano!" Gabe said, unfazed. "Well, I've just been hanging around. You're probably still a little steamed at that video, huh? Sorry. Hey, did you like my performance?"
"Actually, it was rather good." Lizzie said cheerfully. "Just as I'd expect from my little brother."
"Lizzie! We're supposed to be interrogating him, what the hell?" Dean hissed.
"Oh, come on, Dean, what's the big deal? He hasn't done anything. And Sam, you're hurting his wings." Sam looked a little worried and retracted his knee from Gabe's spine.
"Thanks, Sammy, that was kinda hurting. I sprained one of my wings the other day when a sandbag fell on me." He chuckled.
"Oh, I wonder how that could have happened..." Lucifer smiled to himself. "A sandbag falling on you sounds a little cliche, doesn't it?"
"Yeah, maybe you should've toned that down a bit, Lucifer." Gabe retorted as he got up and brushed himself off. "Geez, you must be working out more, Sammy."
"Are you seriously going to carelessly wave off the fact that you have a serious faking-your-own-death problem?" Sam sighed. "It's absolutely infuriating."
"Oh, please, Sam. I've only done it a couple of times." Gabe smirked as he pulled a lollipop out of his pocket, frowning when he found it partially broken from being tackled. Nevertheless, he took off the wrapper, and started eating it, sticking the broken bits in his mouth before he crumpled the wrapper and stuck it in the jean pocket opposite the one he took it out of. "Why, were you worried?" He teased.
"So did Lucifer actually kill you?" Castiel asked.
"Are you kidding? You can't teach an old dog new tricks, but you can be completely abolished by the master. That would be me, by the way." Gabe winked at no one in particular. "Of course, I did die in that gas station when Metatron kidnapped you..."
Cas' eyes widened. "What? But I thought that was-"
"A dream? Bitch, please. In all reality, I'm surprised you remembered that, because Gadreel smashed your noggin in real good." Gabe chuckled. "Of course, then I was overrun by hundreds of my brethren without my full energy, and that didn't end well. Funny thing though, then I woke up."
"Completely graceless?" Lizzie asked. Gabe nodded. "Me too. That's two out of four."
"And you're thinking, that if you and I are wandering around graceless, then Mikey and Ralph are out and about in similar circumstances." Gabe finished. "Sounds like a bad episode of Wife Swap."
"Wait, so if all the other archangel douchebags are running around with low batteries, except of course for Lucifer, which oddly enough doesn't seem to bother you, where the hell are those two?" Dean grumbled.
"Well, I headed straight for what I'm good at, because I was bored and unable to pull my usual pranks. That, and let's be honest, being a janitor is just boring." Gabe smirked. "Since my two lump-headed brothers don't know squat about society, I'd imagine they'd try to do something they're good at too."
"Oh, and what's that?" Dean rolled his eyes. "Blowing people up and backstabbing?"
"Technically speaking, it wasn't an explosion, it was the forceful separation of atomic matter." Castiel replied quietly.
"Right, because I totally know what that means." Dean sighed. "It looked like water and lithium to me."
"That is also not an explosion. The chemical combination of lithium and water creates a rapid expansion of gases, which forces things apart. For something to be called an explosion, a hydro-carbon combustion reaction is required." Cas explained.
"Would you like to put that into pentameter, too?" Dean replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Dean, cut it out." Sam snapped. "Nothing is going to improve by getting nasty at Cas, okay? Gabe, you're good at acting."
"Why, thank you, Sammy. I'm flattered." He grinned.
Sam rolled his eyes. "Anyway, what are the other two good at, exactly?"
"Well, Ralphie was always into plants and stuff." Gabe reminisced. "I recall him saying one time that one day you guys would make potatoes some weird bland colour, and hey, he was right." Sam glared at him. Gabriel ignored it. "And Mikey, he was real good at drawing, painting, artsy stuff like that. Not acting, that would be moi, but like sculptures and stuff you'd find in the Louvre or something."
"Where did you wake up?" Lizzie asked him.
"uh, 'bout two blocks from here." Gabe pointed in a vague direction. "You?"
"The side of the highway down the road from here." Lizzie's eyes brightened. "You think that means those two will be here too?"
"Definite possibility." Gabe confirmed, sharing Lizzie's joy. "We can get the band back together. I'll get my trumpet." Lizzie laughed.
Sam intervened in the sibling get-together, sticking his hands out between them to ensure their attention. "So we're looking for what? A plant nursery and an art gallery?"
Gabe considered this for a second before replying. "Actually, those are good ideas. I'd approach Mike before Ralph, though."
"Um, why?" Sam asked slowly, already sure he knew the answer.
"Well, Raphael holds a grudge longer than Michael." Gabe said matter-of-factly.
End Chapter 7