Title: Tongues of Men and Angels
Rating: TA for implied?romance.
Summary: Glimpses of grace: the story of one brother and two sisters. Through the grace of God, all things are made new.A series of drabbles. Gabriel/OC.
Disclaimer: *obligatory insert*
Chapter IX: Exile
Cain said to the Lord, "My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth…"
Genesis 4: 13-14
He had managed to discern their names, though he kept himself apart from them. They did not stay in any place long, but while they drove he took to the skies and kept an eye on them from above. At night, he stood on the roof of whatever abandoned home they found for refuge, and he gazed in the direction of heaven. His chest felt hollowed out, as empty as the farthest reaches of the universe. He could feel himself beginning to cave in: a body full of sucking wounds.
"Father," he whispered in the tongue of angels, "please—do not rebuke me in your anger or wound me in your wrath. Have mercy on me, Father; I am faint—heal me, for my very bones are agony. My soul is steeped in anguish." He drew in a shuddering breath and felt the tears welling behind his eyes. The stars in the sky were cold. His large body shook with the barrenness of his solitude. "Turn and deliver me, Father—I beg you—save me because of your unfailing love. All night long I flood this desert with weeping and tears. I am laid low—I am weak with sorrow, Father. How long until I may come home? How long?"
There was no answer: only silence. He bowed his head, allowing his pain to wash over him.
And in the silence, he sensed her presence.
"That was beautiful," Bethany said softly, stepping forward. She must have climbed from the window of the second story, which jutted from the rooftop. "What—what was it?"
"It was private," he said shortly, switching back to this fumbling human language. "It was—a supplication. For my Father."
Her feet crunched the gravelly shingles as she padded toward him. "Are you—" She hesitated. "Are you all right, Gabriel?"
He was very still and very quietly, for just a moment. Then, almost against his will, he answered her. "I love my father," Gabriel said slowly. "Ever since the moment I was created, I have longed only to please him."
She stood silently at his back. Slowly, hesitantly, she placed one palm between his wings.
"Have you succeeded?" she asked.
He stiffened. He had no need to bare his soul to a foolish human, whose own spirit was tarnished by repeated sin and whose years were to him as a blink of the eye.
But in spite of himself, a wave of yearning rose in him. In heaven, his inner troubles were known intimately by the Lord. He had been comforted, sated, saturated in love and truth, in holy fire and sacred light. Here, on earth, everything was dull and listless, a work of love rendered gray by atrocity and sin. The comfort he would have found in his Father and his brothers—it was all stripped away.
He was naked. Bereft.
And though the puny measure of comfort offered by this girl could not assuage the ache inside him, which seemed to split through his very core, he still craved it. In the absence of his Father, even this would be a relief—and the thought disgusted him.
"He bade me destroy mankind," Gabriel said, watching her over his shoulder and waiting for her flinch. "I was chosen to lead the armies of God, deep in the heart of this last December."
She waited patiently, her hand never moving. He drew a labored breath, trying to calm himself, and his back rose and fell quickly beneath her open palm. He wondered if she had somehow already known.
"Did you go back?" she asked at last, once his breathing had calmed. Now her hand dropped; she came to stand at his side and peer over the edge of the roof.
His face felt heavy, carved from marble and granite. He looked into the distance. "The Gates were closed," he said shortly, though it did not do justice to the realization itself. He could not—would not—degrade himself to tell her how he had flown for days, even weeks, growing weaker and weaker as he searched for the outcroppings of singing stones, the pillars of the firmament. How he had believed, unequivocally, that Father would lead him home.
When he'd finally realized that he was lost, cast from his Father's presence, the pain had cut through him surer than any Sword of Truth. Blinded for a moment, wounded beyond the telling and sick with grief, he'd crumbled to earth like an injured bird. The wasteland-desert had swallowed him, and for that he'd been grateful. With one hand in his wound, he'd travelled recklessly, the wandering of an abandoned child. He'd prayed to his Father, murmuring seraphic words and hosannas; he'd cursed himself for his own failure to be a worthy son. He'd dreamed of pools of holy water, and in them his reflection was that of Cain. And every new thought brought with it a wave of emptiness, of hunger, of pain.
And finally, he had given up in the sand, just as—
"Father has given up on me," Gabriel said quietly.
"Oh," she said softly. "Well, that's reassuring, isn't it?"
His head snapped around and down to stare at her, his eyes burning blue with questions and anger. She didn't cringe at his glare, though—she only looked a little sad, and a little hopeful.
"I mean," she reasoned gently, "He gave up on us, too, didn't he? And now…here we are. He loved us too much to throw us away."
Word Count: 916
Completed: April 17, 2011
Gabriel's prayer is an adaptation of Psalm 6.