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 XIV: Repent
Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah.
Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you."
Genesis 22: 2
Then (approximately two weeks ago):
They are just lost, his brother had said. And also: We must guard their hearts.
But out on the roof that night, the only sound Gabriel could hear was the sound of the blade as it pierced Michael's flesh, tearing through sinew and muscle and organ; he could feel the weight of his brother, holding him down in the darkness, pleading with him. And while Michael's death had seemed unbearable, it had also seemed inevitable, for had his brother not turned against their Father?
Under the jagged starlight, with the safety of shingles beneath his feet, Gabriel could remember the strangling in his throat. He had never been ashamed of his tears—they were simply part of what his Father had created in him—but neither was he particularly prone to them. Still, wrestling with his own grief over Michael's betrayal—for Gabriel had long ago vowed he would never hurt their Father, never disobey Him, never cause him the anguish that others might—and his secret longing to spare his brother, to embrace him…even now, the memory of it brought a sharpness to his eyes.
"Who is lost now, brother?" he asked darkly, and the words seemed to echo in the vast emptiness of the desert. For a moment, too, it seemed as though the whole desert were inside him. "Will you come to salvage me, too?"
Because his brother's embrace, trying in vain to hold him back from his pursuit of the child, had been echoed again that night as a young human girl had clung to him desperately from the backseat of a vehicle, and since he had cared not at all for her survival—had been, in fact, the angelic general responsible for the pending termination of the human plague—it had not even occurred to him to shield her from the brunt of their impact when they were thrown. Now Gabriel stood immobile on the roof, utterly alone, but he swore he could still feel her soft and fragile arms wrapped around him. It would have been so simple a thing, to turn in midair, to wrap her in the impenetrable armor of his wings.
The girl had been sulky and defiant, and her clothing had been vulgar, but she had also been brave, and perhaps…not so very different from this younger sister, here and now, whom Gabriel found strangely endearing.
And that was not all that clung to him, either.
There was the wail of the child in his ear, and though he had managed to ignore it at the time of pursuit—had shelved it entirely, in fact; had deafened himself to all it entailed—it echoed around him now. He recognized the sound of it in his soul: not the whining of a startled infant, but the weeping of a Son who had been abandoned by His Father.
Why have you forsaken me?
Not only did Gabriel recognize the sound of it, but he was sure his own spirit now rose in an answering cry.
And then there was the man who had saved someone else's hysterical wife, at the cost of his own life—and another man, broken-backed on the floor behind a bar, who had given Gabriel a sharp sneer and a glint of his eye before immolating himself in one last attempt to save—
To save the child perhaps, and maybe the mother, but more than this:
to save his son.
Humans, Gabriel thought. How they haunted him.
He swallowed. The thing in his heart opened and wept blood, but he had no context for the gaping pain, for the strange and hollow sense of loss that pervaded him. He sucked in a breath, trying to fill it with air, but it would not go away. He only knew—
He only knew that somehow—in trying so desperately to please his Father, to serve Him faithfully and to never give Him cause for heartache or sorrow—he had managed to accomplish exactly the opposite.
But how? Perhaps if he could uncover this one thing, this mystery—perhaps then he could return home, and never repeat the error again. Perhaps—
And then there was a muffled thump, and a sliding sound, and that woman was climbing across the roof in her awkward, shuffling human way, and he turned away from her. Her wound disturbed him: rarely did he see such a fitting manifestation of human corruption and weakness, and yet she seemed to wear her ugliness with flagrant disregard. Where she was blessed in that she had kept both eyes—and perhaps they had once been lovely enough, for didn't Father create all things in beauty and innocence? Though certainly nothing seemed to remain that way once it had existed too long beside humanity—where she was blessed to have kept them, the scar then proceeded to peel its way through her lip, and it seemed to him particularly unsettling.
It was not the scar itself, he supposed, allowing his glance to flicker over her disdainfully. It was everything it seemed to represent.
"You look—full of sorrow," the scarred sister said, and he turned his gaze back to the horizon, and he firmly shut her out, shelved her, as he had once done with the wail of a newborn child whose cries now resonated deep within his heart.
Who is lost now, brother?
Word Count: 869
Completed: April 27, 2011
These two chapters—Repent and Be Saved—are companion pieces.
In case you didn't notice (I always struggle with the visual component of these cues), Repent takes place approximately two weeks prior (sometime after Fear Not, but before Exile), while Be Saved rejoins us in the proper, chronological narrative stream, right here and now.
Regarding Repent: I struggled with the placement for this chapter, which I had originally imagined coming much later in the story, after Gabriel's perception of Bethany has altered significantly. I really wanted to show the contrast in how he regards her. However, the story felt imbalanced that way, and eventually I found the perfect (I hope) place for it.
As a sidenote, I do not typically write crying men. Gabriel, however, manages to wear it so well. I was moved and amazed by his ability to maintain his dignity and stoicism while weeping in the movie, and I hope that has translated here. It might be a difficult feat to accomplish—after all, I do plan on bludgeoning him with sorrow. :)