Waking
"How do you feel?"
"Ughhhhh"
Thin arms wrapped around his shoulders, hauling him back slightly so he was leaning against a stack of what felt like pillows.
"Better?" The voice asked critically.
"Gangghhh."
"Hmm." It was quiet for a few moments before Gabriel's nose twitched. He sneezed explosively, his eyes jolting open with the shock as a loud banging sounded from nearby. The vial being held under his nose didn't move, just gave off a faint peppery scent.
"Drink it. It'll help."
For once Gabriel did as he was told, downing the vial in one gulp and wincing when his throat muscles protested. The bed dipped as someone sat on the edge and Gabriel turned to see the Watcher, looking pale as always but rather more concerned than normal.
"Good evening," She bid quietly, taking the vial away and setting it down on a nearby filing cabinet which seemed to double as a bedside table.
As a warm, tingling feeling spread to his vessel's limbs, memory came back, slowly, like treacle off a spoon.
"I don't..." He started, voice hoarse. "Lucifer!"
He surged upright in panic and that banging started up again as he automatically called for his angel blade, only to panic further when it didn't appear in his hands.
"Easy!" Slim hands landed on his shoulders and the Watcher pushed him back towards the pillows. "Easy. You're fine. He cannot get you here, I promise."
"I can't." Gabriel pleaded, confused. "My grace..."
"You're exhausted." She placated. "Look..." Grabbing his chin she turned his head to the side. "Still an angel."
She was mostly right.
Those were his wings, enormous, golden and splayed across several dented cabinets. They twitched absently, which meant he wasn't strong enough to lift them properly.
They were also, horrifyingly, corporeal.
Which meant he was so exhausted he lacked the grace to hide them.
Well that sucked.
"Where...?" He asked bewildered.
The Watcher sighed.
"Do you remember what happened?" She asked gently.
Lucifer had stabbed him and...
No.
That was wrong.
Lucifer had tried to kill him and Gabriel, in a desperate, terrified bid to survive, had torn himself to pieces, leaving enough of himself behind to fool his big brother into thinking he'd been successful.
He had lost his grace...his wings.
The Archangel lot out a low moan of pain and let himself be pulled forward into an embrace, sobbing out his pain and betrayal onto the Watcher's shoulder.
He must have fallen asleep at some point because the next time he opened his eyes he was back in the bed, covers pulled over him.
The Watcher was curled in a nearby armchair, an empty teacup balanced precariously on the armrest.
Everything hurt.
This wasn't really a surprise as he had effectively rendered himself human. The spaces left from everything he'd been forced to leave behind, gaped emptily, the remainder of his grace swirling to try and fill the holes.
He watched the Watcher as she slept. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, softening her features and that magic which normally curled around her like a wild rose was slumped in exhausted tendrils. He didn't know he'd gotten to the warehouse. He could only remember searching for somewhere, anywhere, safe.
Which he had apparently found.
"I thought you were going to die." The hoarse voice jerked him out of the reverie he'd been in and he refocused on the Watcher.
"You and me both." He coughed.
"Aguamenti." She murmured and the teacup refilled with clear water. She passed it to him and, by some small miracle, Gabriel didn't spill it down his front.
This was humiliating. Archangel's weren't supposed to get thirsty.
"How long..."
She cut him off with a grimace.
"A week. I wasn't sure if you were ever going to wake. This was beyond my power." The Watcher rubbed at her temples. "Although you seemed to get better after the wings appeared."
That's because he hadn't been wasting precious grace keeping them hidden.
"Did I get it right?" He asked, shuffling slightly further up the bed and ignoring the dragging feeling of moving his wings. That was really going ache. "Did I do what you wanted?"
She sighed.
"Or did me not dying ruin everything?" He added bitterly.
"Without you the Winchester's would have fallen to the Archangels. Castiel would've been killed for daring to defy his brothers. But now," She shifted in her chair. "Now, they know about the keys to Lucifer's Cage. Now they have a chance. And for people like that a chance is all they need. They can stop it." She took a deep breath in through her nose and shrugged. "They've got a long road ahead of them but...They'll get there in the end. The path is set. The next shift intervention isn't for almost three generations."
Gabriel frowned.
"Wait, if I just had to tell them about the keys..."
"It wasn't about the keys." She interrupted. "I didn't know which path you were going to choose. In some you joined Lucifer or Michael and the world ended. In others you joined the Winchesters and it didn't. Either the world ended or it didn't depending on which outcome you chose."
"Then why did you think I was going to die?" Gabriel demanded, angrily.
She gave him an unimpressed stare, which told him not to be petulant.
Gabriel summoned the energy to stick his tongue out at her.
"Because your path went dark." She told him eventually. "After you made your choice...I couldn't calculate you any more. Usually that means the radical is dead."
"Calculate?"
"I run equations." She explained. "I'm not a Seer, Gabriel, I'm a mathematician. I work out which variables will work out for the best, identify the free radical in each situation. Work out which actions I need to take to ensure the best outcome occurs. The Warehouse does the rest."
His head ached, but he asked anyway.
"And what does it mean that mine went dark?"
The Watched leaned back in her armchair, one hand absent-mindedly combing through her hair. She scowled where her fingers got caught and began tease at the tangle. "There are two options." She told him mildly. "Either you are going to die very soon and not do anything significant to the time line between now and then, or your time line has become blurred."
"You really don't give a shit if I die, do you?" Gabriel asked amazed. She was reminding him eerily of Raphael.
The Watcher shrugged.
"It happens." She murmured and waited.
It took five minutes but eventually Gabriel got bored of staring at the shiny lights in her aura and asked the question.
"Blurred?"
There was another heavy sigh.
"I cannot see the future." She started. "Not a Seer, remember?"
"Duh."
That earned him an eye roll.
"But...I can predict certain aspects with a fairly good success rate. That relies upon a knowledge of the variables involved and the probabilities of certain actions. However predicting probabilities becomes impossible when you put yourself into the mix."
"Because you know how things end effects how you act." Gabriel realised. That was the same reason he didn't know his own personal fate.
She nodded.
"Exactly. I cannot calculate my own time line. Believe me if I could, I wouldn't be here of all places." She looked bitter for a second before passing out of it. "So when someone else's time line become mixed with my own, I lose the objectivity to predict the outcome." She seemed to be somewhat annoyed about that. "Usually people die. I don't know why you didn't."
"Sorry to disappoint." He muttered rudely.
She shrugged and got to her feet.
"Nothing you can do about it. Don't get up. You need to rest and recover. The shock of splitting your grace is going to take time to get over." She paused, frowning. "You can retrieve it, correct?"
Tiredly Gabriel nodded. He could feel sleep creeping up on him again.
"Good. You may be useful after all."
He awoke to voices echoing across the warehouse. His strength was back, or at least enough that he finally lift his aching wings and fold them against his back. His jacket and shoes were missing, but the Watcher had evidently repaired his clothes because the bloodstain and the...you know...hole was gone. He didn't think he could actually stand up properly without falling over so he perched on the end of the bed, concentrating on the voices.
"I don't think you've ever actually called in an order early, ma'am." A cultured voice was saying, accompanied by the rustling of plastic bags.
The Watcher hummed.
"Extenuating circumstances. I've got a guest. How's your girlfriend?"
"Lisa's great." Was this guy Welsh? Gabriel scowled and noticed the hovering, semi-transparent circle a foot away from his nose. It seemed to be encircling the bed. "We went out for dinner two nights ago. She was still sleeping when I got your call."
"Thank you for getting here so quickly, I know it's your day off."
The man laughed happily.
"What's a weekend without having to do an emergency run to Tesco's? That'll be fifty quid by the way."
Gabriel poked at the golden circle with his finger. There was a muffled curse for the distance.
"Here's the money. I'm afraid my guest has woken up. I'll see you at the usual time, yes?"
The voices faded and then Gabriel heard a door opening and closing.
"Colloportus." The Watcher ordered and the door he couldn't see locked with a squelch. Gabriel poked at the circle again. "Gabriel, stop poking the ward!" She yelled, sounding closer. "You're aggravating it."
She appeared from between two cabinets and glared at him, one hand resting on her hip.
"Yes, I get it. He's awake." She pulled that stick from her sleeve and banished the circle with a wave. "How're you doing?" She asked in the next breath. "I've got food," The Watcher added and Gabriel looked up hopefully. The powers attached to being a Norse deity normal fed off his grace, but now there wasn't enough left to fly let alone keep that bundle of joy under control, which meant it was gorging itself on whatever it could find.
Namely Gabriel's fat reserves.
Urgh, he could feel himself getting hungry already.
"Does it have sugar in it?" He asked slowly.
The Watcher looked amused.
"Yes, but you're not eating in my bed." She stepped closer and hauled him upright, where he swayed. "Arm around my shoulder, please."
Gabriel scowled.
"I don't need to be helped!" He snapped.
The Watcher took a clear step away, before jabbing his chest with one finger.
Gabriel toppled.
"Is your pride going to continue to get in the way?" The Watcher asked coolly, staring down at him. Gabriel struggled upright, using the bed to haul himself up. This was just dumb. He didn't need some human...He swayed on the spot and the room blurred slightly.
Okay, maybe he did.
"Please." He bit out and the Watcher nodded, ducking under one of his arms and supporting his weight, taking care to avoid the wings.
Slowly they staggered across the warehouse until the came to what he'd decided to call her "office", where the Watched dumped him onto the sofa. Plastic shopping bags were set to one side of the clearing and she rummaged through them, absent-mindedly setting items aside in no ascertainable order.
"I have ice-cream...Jacob's Crackers...Cheddar...Tinned fruit..." She peered over to him. "What sounds good?"
"Ice-cream?" Gabriel tried, doubting his luck. After the first...several hundred years of eating, things began to lose their taste. Sugar, however, remained as addictive as it had always been and everyone loved ice-cream.
She chewed on her lip for a moment.
"Will you put fruit on top of it?" She bargained.
"What sort?" Gabriel asked suspiciously.
She examined the tin.
"Peaches...in syrup."
Gabriel sighed, sinking further into the sofa cushions.
"Fine." She glared at him. "Thank you?" He added.
The Watcher huffed and held out one hand. Somewhere in the distance a drawer opened with a clatter and a spoon zoomed towards them. She grabbed it out of the air, and set everything down on her desk, before holding out her hand again and summoning a bowl.
Eventually Gabriel was presented with a large bowl of chocolate ice cream, topped with peaches.
"You know I don't need vitamins and crap, right?" He asked digging in.
The Watcher, who'd been busy licking stray bits of syrup of her fingers, frowned at him.
"I...I know that." She said carefully. "I'm sorry. Getting fruit into people...It's a habit left over from..." She faded into silence and he risked a peek at her soul...and nearly lost the ice-cream in his mouth.
That was a lot of grief.
He squinted into the bowl at the peaches and then up at the Watcher who was leaning against her desk, staring off at the distant wall. Both of her hands were clenched tightly into fists and Gabriel could see her shaking very slightly.
And then she drew in a deep breath and it all...stopped.
Oh, there was no way that was healthy.
His ice-cream was starting to melt, so Gabriel focused on that rather than the woman who was now pottering around, send groceries flying in different directions with quiet waves of her hands. Her magic was calm, the thorns he usually saw, hidden out of sight.
Deceptively dangerous in librarian's jumpers.
"You finished?" She asked, holding her hand out for his empty bowl. Gabriel yawned and handed it over. "It's going to take a few days for you to be strong enough to retrieve what's left of your grace." She set the bowl down on her desk and sighed. "I imagine you're going to be mostly human until then."
Gabriel didn't dignify that with an answer, just pulled his wings around himself and plucked at the feathers, trying to straighten them.
"I'll take you back when I can. I shouldn't have too many shifts in the next few days."
"What about your co-workers?" Gabriel blurted.
"Beg pardon?" She sounded confused.
He lowered his wing just enough to glare at her over the top of it.
"You can't really expect me to believe you put this entire thing together. You said there was a Department, right?"
She blinked at him. Did people seriously think he didn't listen to anything?
"That's right." Gabriel gestured for her to go on. "The Department of Mysteries own the warehouse. I am a Senior Researcher into Time Lines and Dimensional Travel for that department."
"And there are more of you?" Gabriel frowned, unable to comprehend there could be more beings as powerful as she was. "Working here?"
She swallowed, before smiling brightly.
"There were." She gave him a false grimace. "But..there were budget cuts. They couldn't keep the entire team on when only one researcher was needed. So it's just me now."
"Huh."
Well, that was a weird thing to lie about.
Gabriel slept for most of the next day.
Well, he assumed it was a day. There were no windows and, as they were technically floating in a pocket universe, time progression was weird. He slept on the sofa and measured time in how often the Watcher got up to feed him, shaking him awake to hand him some odd concoction consisting of both sugar and vitamins.
She seemed to spend her day surrounded by endless piles of paperwork, moving from one folder to another, scratching down notes with her quill. Occasionally she'd get up and move to one of the doors. He couldn't see what she was doing, but she always came back with more notes than when she started.
There was no one else there that he could see, no other living presences other than their own. She never stopped to text someone, or take a phone call, never sat down and wrote a letter like Gabriel used to see the humans doing. Even the Winchesters, with their weird co-dependency thing had more contact with the real world than she did.
"I'm bored." Gabriel whined.
"Hello bored." the Watcher returned, not looking up from her calculations.
"That is officially the worst joke ever." Gabriel's wings, still irritatingly corporeal, itched behind him. There was a whole bunch of feathers he just couldn't straighten. "What are you doing?"
"Calculating the odds of this radical dying." She murmured, scoring out an entire line and beginning again.
He sobered slightly.
"Do they all die?" He asked quietly.
The Watcher looked up at him and sighed.
"Mostly, no, they don't. Not if I have anything to say about it. You were an unfortunate exception."
He shrugged.
"How does it usually end?"
She bit her lip, looked down at her paperwork and then up at him again.
"You're really interested?" she asked doubtfully.
Gabriel nodded and she grinned, grabbed her files, before crossing the space to flop down next to him on the sofa.
"This is a fairly basic Shift." She started, spreading the files across both of their laps. "It's a love triangle essentially, and you would not believe how much of my work comes down to love." She rolled her eyes. "Anyway, this function here," She pointed to a section of equation, "Represents the Free Radical. These other ones are the major key players. I calculate the equations and then run them through the..." She blinked. "Right. So there are two main outcomes in this. Either she marries the man of her dreams, follows him into his line of work. They get married, get pregnant... and then he dies in an enemy attack, which will orphan their son and leave her devastated. Or, she goes out with the nice guy from the shop. That doesn't really go anywhere, but by the time she realises she made a mistake, man of her dreams has moved on. She eventually settles down with a policeman and again has a son. She lives a long and, mostly inconsequential life."
"So what's the catch?" Gabriel asked, "She should go for the safe guy, right..." She stared at him and Gabriel thought it through. "But it's not about her, is it?" The Watcher's eyes seemed to spark in excitement. "It's about what she sets off. So the son?"
She smiled quietly.
"Precisely. It's not about her, unfortunately. It's about what she will set into play."
"Okay. So what're you going to do about it? Kidnap her too?"
She flushed.
"You were a special case, and no. In fact it'll take very little. There is a 65% chance she'll go for the right man. All it takes is a spilled coffee and a dropped stack of enlistment forms."
"And that's the time line set?"
"Mmm. Think about..." She cast around for a second. "John and Mary Winchester. If they hadn't gotten together..."
"The bloodlines of Cain and Able would never have been mixed. My brother's would never have had their vessels." He realised. "Ah."
"Exactly. The entire Apocalypse, had it not been micro-managed and set in stone to begin with, depend on Mary Campbell running away with the right man."
"What happens to her?" Gabriel asked, gesturing to the papers. "In the end?"
"Winona?" The Watcher shrugged. "If it goes right...she and her son go to live near her parents. She re-marries eventually, the man's an arsehole, but it doesn't last long. Her son has a rocky childhood and there are a lot of issues, but eventually he gets himself sorted out. Does his mother incredibly proud and, if his shift intervention goes right, lives a long a happy life himself, in which time he will save the lives of billions of people. All because his mother married the right man."
"Huh." Gabriel managed.
She shuffled the papers back into order, re-reading each equation with a small frown.
"Next shift intervention?" He asked, thinking back.
"Each time we interfere with the time line, it's called a "Shift"." She shrugged. "Not the most ideal name, I'll admit, but it was decided long before I came along."
"You're not a goddess." Gabriel blurted.
She stared at him.
"Do you have a fever?" She asked concerned.
"What? No! It's just...this is your day job," And night job because he'd never actually seen her leave. "You're not some pagan playing fate, you're actually just a human doing her job!"
She frowned and pressed one hand to her own forehead, before pressing it against his.
"What are you doing?" He asked, going cross eyed.
"I'm worried you might be running a temperature. You seem to be delirious."
Gabriel scoffed, waving her off.
"You know, I never really got it." He told her.
"Got what?" She murmured, concerned.
"The whole "save the humans" thing. I mean, I didn't hate them, but they were this thing which tore my family apart. Dad's new baby. But you guys really can do anything can't you?"
The Watcher stiffened and her mood changed entirely, concern replaced with ill hidden anger.
"Yes, we can." She said, sternly. "And that's both a good thing and a bad thing. They create and they destroy. Humanity is a double edged blade wielded by a blind man in a china store."
She got up from the sofa and grabbed the jacked slung over the back of her armchair.
"I'll be back in an hour." She said, pulling it on.
Gabriel struggled upright and then gave up when she shoved him back onto the sofa with a wave of her hand. He was officially pathetic. "Stay there." She warned.
"Where are you going?" He demanded.
She waved the file at him as she headed away between rows of cabinets.
"To spill coffee on someone!"
A minute later a distant door slammed behind her.
Gabriel managed to walked the next day and went on a raid. It was a testament to how damn engrossed in her work the woman was that the Watcher didn't notice him actually standing up and hobbling away across the warehouse. Apparently a Trickster wandering around wasn't a cause for concern.
She had a kitchen. Well...sort of. It was yet another clearing which was surrounded my a solid wall of filing cabinets, these ones dated from between 1928 and 1934 and consisted of; a stand alone sink, a filing cabinet which after further investigation was actually a fridge pretending to be a filing cabinet, a freezer of a similar design and a cooker, on which an old fashioned kettle was perched. The teapot on the kitchen table was stone cold, which meant it had been at least two hours since her last cup.
Staggering this far had taken more out of him than he'd thought, so he pulled the last of his ice cream out of the freezer and settled against the table to eat it.
It was quiet in here. His hearing remained on an angelic level, no matter how low his grace was and the only thing he could hear was the quiet scratching of the Watcher's quill some twenty feet away. Nothing moved or scurried or grew.
Gabriel's Father had created a world which was never silent, never still. On Earth, everything constantly changed.
Here, nothing did.
Eventually he made his way over to the nearest wall and the doors set into it, ever meter or so. They weren't all identical, he realised. Most were made out of the same wood as his own door, although each had a bronze plaque on the front with what looked like a serial number etched into it. Some of them were painted, some scorched in places, so felt very cold to the touch and some very warm. One had a large radio-active sticker on it and another a set of tally marks, carved roughly into the wood.
They were all locked.
"How many doors are there?" He asked when he eventually made his way back to her office.
The Watcher, being apparently incredibly unobservant, jumped, staring at him with wild eyes.
"What?" she demanded, voice high.
"The doors. How many?"
She gave a casual wave.
"Two hundred, give or take. The warehouse changes as it sees fit. Some of them are permanent, some aren't."
Gabriel eyed the floor warily.
"Is the warehouse sentient?"
"No. Just well engineered."
"What does that mean?" He demanded.
She put down her quill.
"It was redesigned with this purpose in mind. The entire building in covered in runes, it's what makes us a pocket dimension." She paused to check he was following, which he was. Gabriel was getting the impression this woman had spent a lot of her life dumbing things down for other people's benefit. "You remember I told you they developed the ability to calculate turning points in time lines..."
"And locate free radicals, yeah..."
"Well, all of that magic was built into the warehouse. It automatically seeks out these breaks in the time lines and hones in on them, collecting data about the situation."
Gabriel leaned against a cabinet, frowning.
Magic. She'd said. Not science, not energy, not grace. Magic.
"Why do you need to do the equations then?"
The Watcher tugged on the end of her braid.
"Who is to say what the happy ending is to a story?" She asked him and he paused. "If we set the warehouse to identify the preferred outcome as one which benefited the free radical, millions would die. If we set it to identify what was best for the general population, you have to define what's best. There is no way a building could feasible make that judgement, and even then you'd still need people to actually intervene." She scowled bitterly. "You have to understand Gabriel, the people who built this place, they wanted to be gods. They wanted to meddle in the lives of millions. They were arrogant and they were wrong. The warehouse simply identifies the breaks because they wanted the power to choose right from wrong, not because they wanted what was best."
"Then why do you work here?" Gabriel pressed, glaring at her.
She froze for a second.
"It pays well." She said at last, turning back to her paperwork.
"What are you doing?"
Gabriel flushed, embarrassed.
"Nothing?" He offered.
"Because," She continued as though he hadn't spoken, all the while eyeing him strangely, "It looks like you're trying to scratch your back with the corner of one of my cabinets."
"Wow, you're smart." Gabriel drawled, stepping away from the filing cabinet in question. There was a small pile of incriminating feathers next to it.
"Gabriel." She warned. "What's wrong?"
Gabriel crossed his arms and stared at his feet.
"Not telling you." He mumbled.
There was a long sigh and then the Watcher muttered,
"I swear, it's like dealing with George." then louder she repeated. "What's wrong?"
Gabriel snarled, glared when it didn't get him anywhere and turned around.
"Oh!" She realised, stepping closer to the tangled snarl of feathers just where he couldn't reach him. "You're bumfled."
"Bumfled?" Gabriel asked, peering over his shoulder.
"Mm. It's all caught and in the wrong place. Long sleeves in jackets when you forget to hold on the cuffs."
"Huh."
"Would you like me to fix it?" She offered.
Gabriel paused.
Wings were personal. They were something for family. Well...family you actually talked to. When you had thousands of brothers and sisters, that was an important distinction. Wings were one of an angels greatest weaknesses, even in their true forms they had their wings. It used to be that Michael or Lucifer would help him with his wings, but that had been a long time ago. Actually, now he thought about it, that might have been the last time the damn things were actually corporeal.
Only now they were and Gabriel didn't have a brother around to help him.
He stared at the woman over his shoulder for a long moment.
They were friends?
Comrades?
Maybe. She knew almost everything about him. He knew nothing about her. But she'd sheltered him, healed him, broken bread with him. Well...sugar really, but the point stood.
"Please." He murmured and she nodded ushering him towards the kitchen. He straddled on one the wooden chairs there, giving her unlimited access to his back.
"You know what you're doing?" He queried, slightly anxious.
The Watcher gave a warm laugh.
"You have seen my hair, haven't you? I'm an expert at untangling things."
Gabriel gnawed on his knuckle. There was a reason he was usually chewing on candy. It was a nervous tick.
"Who's George?" He asked after several minutes.
Her hands, buried in his feathers, stilled.
"He's..." She coughed. "He's an old friend of mine. We went to school together. He ended up being my brother-in-law. He used to run a joke shop with his twin brother. They're a lot like you."
Gabriel stilled.
"You're married?" He twisted to stare at her.
The Watcher swallowed, looking extremely tired.
"I was." She murmured. "Not any more."
Divorce or Death, Gabriel wondered silently, before frowning as he tried to work out which one was worse.
She went back to straightening feathers and Gabriel relaxed as the irritation which had been plaguing him for days slowly faded.
"I've not died yet." He told her.
The Watcher snorted softly.
"There's still time." She murmured. Gabriel turned just enough to see the faint smile curving her lips.
"Boy, do you know how to make a guest feel welcome." He drawled. She tugged on one his feathers in retaliation.
"How's the grace doing?" She asked casually.
"I'm giving her all she's got," He quipped. "But we just can't get the shields up, Captain!"
There was silence for a moment, before the Watcher asked.
"Did you just misquote Star Trek at me?"
"They have Star Trek where you're from?" He twisted to looked at her and she rolled her eyes.
"Yes. We do. My universe isn't much different from yours."
"Except you have magic instead of angels."
She froze and he smirked at her.
"What? How dumb do you think I am?"
"I don't think you want me to answer that." She countered, narrowing her brown eyes. "But yes. We had magic. I don't know if we had angels. You're the first one I've ever met."
"Aww. I took your angelic virginity."
She glared at him.
"I can just stop," She warned, pulling her hands away from his feathers.
"No!" Gabriel yelped desperately. She was almost finished too.
"Then answer the question properly."
It took him a moment to remember what the question actually was, by which time she'd gone back to sorting his wings.
"Another day or so and I'll be able to hide these bad boys." He flexed his wings for emphasis and she flicked the back of his head. "I can get the rest of my grace then."
"Do you think Lucifer suspects anything?" She asked and Gabriel winced.
The answer was probably not. Probably. His brother was an arrogant son of a...ahem...and the thought that someone he'd killed wasn't actually dead wasn't one that would really occur to him. On the other hand...
"It should have worked. In a way, he did kill me." Gabriel took the silence as a cue to continue. "The double I left behind was still me. It was still my grace. That's all I am in the end. A string of celestial intent."
"You survived, that's what's important." The Watcher stepped back. "All done. Please pick up the feathers you've left on the floor."
Gabriel got up to gape at her.
"I am a being millenia old.."
"And you will be picking up after yourself." The Watcher told him sternly.
"You mock my pain!" He complained, flopping dramatically into the chair, which almost over balanced. He could not wait to have his grace back.
The Watcher stared at him for a long moment before saying,
"Life is pain, Angel. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something." And walking away.
Gabriel stared after her for a long time.
Did she just quote "The Princess Bride" at him?
"Ready?"
Gabriel buzzed on the spot, his now intangible wings, fluttering frantically.
"Yep!"
They were going to get his grace. The rest of him!
The Watcher rolled her eyes and pulled out the stick she always had stashed on her person.
"Alohamora." She said, tapping the door firmly. A loud thunk went through the warehouse accompanied by a wash of magic as something which had previously not been connected to anything in particular, reconnected to Gabriel's universe. He bounded out of the now open door and into the bright sunlight, taking in the surrounding streets with joy. The Watcher followed him, leaning in the doorway, watching him with a small smile on her face.
"You'll to be okay to get there?" She asked as Gabriel resisted the urge to hover on the spot.
"Oh, please!" Gabriel grinned at her. "I'm an Archangel. I'll be fine."
She looked unimpressed by this and Gabriel wondered if she'd misheard him.
"Archangel!" He repeated, waving at himself.
"I hadn't forgotten." She stepped backwards into the shadow of the warehouse, avoiding the sunlight. "Take care of yourself, Gabriel."
Gabriel spread his wings and then paused.
"Uh..." He managed. This was going to hurt, he just knew it. The Watcher waited patiently, one eyebrow raised. "I think...You didn't have to help me. So...Thank you for not letting me bleed on of the pavement and then get chopped into little bits by my big brother!" He said that all very quickly, but judging by the surprised look on her face, she'd heard enough to get the general gist.
She grinned.
"You're very welcome, Gabriel."
Gabriel spread his wings and flew.
The motel, or what was left of it, was completely abandoned when he arrived there. All of the windows and few walls had been blown out, destroyed in the destruction that followed the death of an Archangel.
Or..you know...the faked death of an Archangel.
The double he'd left behind had long since faded, leaving his angel blade stuck into motel floor, with the slight echo of his grace clinging to it.
He shifted on his feet nervously.
In theory, his grace, what was left anyway, should've been stored in his blade. In theory.
"Just do it." He snapped, crouching down. "Like pulling a primary, nice and quick."
He grabbed the blade, pulling it from the floor.
"Oh, crap!" He breathed.
And fell over.
His grace was back and it felt brilliant! He flew to India just to prove he could and spent several hours flitting from rooftop to rooftop, taking in the bright colours and scents. He flew to America and gorged on the weirdest, most sugar filled candy he could find.
His grace was back and he was unstoppable.
His grace induced high lasted a full month, before life came crashing down on him again.
He was alone.
Lucifer had murdered the pagans, with the exception of Kali. Anyone he might have named friend was dead.
He couldn't go back to the angels. Michael would expect him to join his side and Lucifer, if he found out Gabriel was still alive, would send the hordes of Hell after him.
He couldn't risk going back to being the Trickster, the risk of the Winchester's finding him was too great and they couldn't keep a secret from each other, let alone the rest of the freakin' world.
He had nowhere to go.
Only that wasn't entirely true.
They were friend's, weren't they? She'd saved his life and she definitely needed company before she went properly insane. He could visit other universes...see those happy endings. That'd be fun.
He went back and found the door unlocked.
The Watcher wasn't immediately visible, curled up on the side of her bed, staring at nothing very much.
"Hey." He said softly, trying not to startle her.
Her brown eyes jumped to his and she paled dramatically, sitting upright in bed.
"You're not dead!" She yelled accusingly.
"Why is that a problem!" Gabriel yelled back and she scowled.
"You're supposed to be dead. Your time line is dark. I can't see it. Therefore you. Are. Dead!"
"No! I'm not!" He rolled his eyes. "Gees, you said yourself, me dying was only one option."
"Yes, but people don't get tangled in my time line." She told him patiently. "I don't have fri..." She paused. "Why are you here?" She demanded, suspiciously.
"I have decided..." Gabriel announced. "That I'm going to stay here and help you."
The Watcher stared at him.
"What?"
"I wanna see other universes."
"You're an Archangel." She told him, looking confused. "You can do that anyway."
"Yeah, but this has happy endings!" He beamed at her and she just looked dazed. "It's more fun with someone else." He added hopefully.
"Right." She blinked. "I'm sorry, you want to stay here?"
"Yes."
"With me?" She added, incredulous.
"Yep!"
She pinched her arm and sighed when it apparently hurt.
"Why?" She wailed, looking utterly bewildered.
"Because we're friends!" Gabriel proclaimed. It was what he did. He had the horn and everything. Or at least he'd had the horn. Couldn't actually remember where he left the damn thing.
"Says who?" The Watcher cried.
"Me." Gabriel grinned. "Give in, I swear it's easier."
She stared at him for a long moment, before sighing and nodding.
"I need tea." She decided.
"Sure thing, Watcher." Gabriel turned to head towards the kitchen.
"Hermione."
He turned back to look at her, frowning.
"What?"
"Hermione Granger." She got to her feet and smiled at him, nervously. "That's my name. It's a pleasure to meet you properly."