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. Ish. Gabriel/OC. Ish.
Disclaimer: *obligatory insert*
Chapter X: A Moment of Joy
...Ruth replied, "Don't urge me to leave you or turn back from you. Where you go, I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there be buried…"
Ruth 1:16-17
"Will you go to her, please?" the scarred sister asked. Gabriel wondered how she bore her wound: like everything else on this planet, it seemed to serve only as evidence of the human ruination of God's precious gifts. Underneath the ugly—and clearly manmade—scar, she had been lovely once.
He stared at her silently as she bent into the oven. Heat wafted out as she slid the tray in.
"She'll be so excited," Bethany said, and laughed softly. "Just tell her."
Why? he thought. He was uncertain if the question was for Bethany—why are you asking me to do this?—or for his Father—why are You asking me to do this?
Soundlessly he turned on his heel and left the house.
He found her on the edge of the road. She was staring at nothing, at the uniform houses across the street, with parched lawns and abandoned porches. He was finding that Joy did this often: moved to some place where the view was narrow and ugly, and stared into a distance that wasn't there, her eyes vague and empty. The sun streamed down on her now, nothing like the sweet burning holy light of God, but something polluted and glaring. Sweat sheened her brow. She didn't blink.
He stood at her side, an obvious presence, but for the moment he chose silence over speech. There was something about her stillness, how deeply entrenched she was within herself, that made him reluctant to disturb her. Minutes passed.
Then she moved.
"Beth sent you, didn't she?"
He inclined his head and grew tense, waiting for her words. It was vaguely surprising—how her flinching had somehow managed to pierce his carefully-cultivated austerity, how it managed to make him feel low. He, who had once been one of the most elevated of archangels—
And how the other one, named for the town where Lazarus was given second life, managed to make him feel whole.
If ever an angel could be driven mad, he imagined these sisters would do it.
She chuckled softly, gently: almost as though she'd somehow divined his thought. It was a sound he associated more with the older, scarred girl—calm, brimming with warmth and sadness and affection—but he was undeniably, if reluctantly, glad to hear it from her. "That's Beth," she murmured. "She thinks if there's anything wounded or ugly, that it's worth holding on to. Fighting for." A pause. "Loving."
Her words stung, but he wasn't sure why. He realized then that he didn't know if Joy was referring to herself—or to him.
"You know she sent you out here for a reason, instead of coming herself, right?" she chuckled, but the gentleness had been replaced by bleakness and despair and dryness. This was the tone he was used to hearing from the younger sister. "Everything she does is—smart. Calculated." She sighed, the long-suffering little sister in torment, and for a moment she sounded real and alive. "I'm sure she thinks we can be something for each other. Best buddies or something ridiculous like that. The sucky thing is that she usually ends up being right."
He wasn't sure how to respond, so instead he said solemnly, "She only bid me tell you that she found frozen pizza. DiGiorno. With stuffed crust."
Her head whipped around to look up at him—she is very small, he thought—and then she did laugh, surprised out of her desolation by the incongruity of his words.
"Are all our interactions going to be about food, Gabe?" she said, a smile still on her lips. He was startled by the familiarity, but not altogether displeased. It was certainly preferable to her terror, though he still sensed fear lingering around her edges.
He inclined his head once more. "If you wish it," he acknowledged, and the younger sister sighed.
"Thank you," she said reluctantly. "For staying with me, I mean. For being patient. I know it took a while."
He frowned. "I have much time to spare, child."
"Will you—" she broke off. "Will you do it again? I sometimes—I need to be alone. But I don't like being alone."
He understood instinctively: solitude without abandonment. It was one of the things he'd so prized in heaven, one of the things he craved so deeply now. And just as easily, and without sparing it a second thought, he found himself giving his promise. "Yes," he said readily, and it surprised him.
"Come on," the sister called Joy beckoned, starting toward the house. "Just because you don't eat doesn't mean you shouldn't join us for family dinner."
He stared after her, something unnamed and unknowable tightening inside him. He thought at first it was anger, or the loneliness he bore for his Father and brothers—but no, that wasn't right. "Family dinner?" he repeated, and the question meant something deeper than he wanted to acknowledge, deeper than he could bear.
"Of course," Joy said, with a tense and still-nervous—but very genuine—little smile. "I guess Bethany's got it in her head to adopt you as my big brother."
Brother, he thought, and it was followed quickly by the memory of his own mournful condemnation: You wanted to live like one of them—
"Come on," she summoned him again, and now she held out one hand to him, tentatively. "All of us—we're alone out here. We're family now."
Word Count: 904
Completed: April 18, 2011