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 XVI: Bethel
Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother who sins against me? Up to seven times?"
Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times."
Matthew 18: 21-22
"Michael tells me that humans are capable of so many deep kindnesses," Gabriel confided only a few nights later. They had not moved on yet from the house of the giant bath, but he was coming to realize that Bethany had crafted a quest that was more about the journey than the destination—and that each moment became a carefully cultivated opportunity, somehow engineered to try to offer some sad bit of healing to another part of her sister's soul.
And in spite of all this new knowledge, he was still startled at his own tone. When had he begun speaking to her in this way, as though she might have all the answers? Before, he had gone to her to teach him, but he had expected something—different. Less.
And instead…
Instead he thought he might be learning just as much about himself as he was about her.
"We are," Bethany said lightly, wrapping her arms around her knees. The shingles beneath them were pebbled and sharp, and Joy had joined them on the roof tonight, for whatever foolish whim had struck her adolescent heart. She'd laid out a comforter on the roof, and her head was pillowed on Bethany's sneakers. In the darkness, the younger sister let out a soft snore, and Bethany chuckled and stroked the hair back from her sister's brow.
"We're a pretty dichotomous people," the older girl said, her voice low. "We do—amazing things, and awful things. There's rarely a middle ground." She leaned sideways, briefly pressing her shoulder into his bicep, and he had grown to recognize it as a gesture of camaraderie. He allowed it, and he might—perhaps—have secretly savored the fleeting contact and all it represented. "What particularly were you thinking of, anyway?"
A less-dignified creature might have shrugged. "Many things," he evaded. "Defenders of humanity tell me that mankind has hope, but I have already seen this in action—they hope to the point of foolishness."
She laughed softly. "Yes," she agreed. "I've been guilty of that myself, once or twice."
"Some say—that they have inherited Father's tendency to create. That their ability to imagine a thing is beyond the scope of angelic knowledge—but I have never heard a human music that resonates in both the ears and the soul like the songs of the heavenly chorus."
"Rap and country just don't cut it," she acknowledged. He cast a sharp glance at her. Her expression was schooled in innocence, but her copper eyes sparkled teasingly.
"Michael—" he said, and his face hardened almost imperceptibly, as though he'd peeled open a healing wound. "Michael claimed the secret beauty of humans was in their ability to forgive."
She looked at him sharply—for a moment she wondered if he knew—but she kept her tone careful and light. "We are pretty good at that, I guess."
Now he was looking at her more closely, his eyes slanting sideways in the dark. She supposed her own quick glance had given her away, had alerted him to her secrets. His eyes cut her open in the way that she imagined only angel-eyes could—bright and full of holy fire, scathing, cauterizing. She shivered a little and looked away.
"Explain," he ordered, though the word was patient and curious rather than demanding.
For a long moment she was silent, her eyes moving from her sister's face and out to the empty horizon. How desolate the desert was now. Most people had flocked to the cities, to live in enclaves and clans, to try to build something new. What had made her think that running into the vast wastelands was a good plan? That hopping from town to decimated town was good for her sister, or that adopting an archangel would somehow make the world better and brighter and easier?
And yet, it had been the only thing she could think of to heal Joy's hidden wounds.
"Would you have really murdered that woman and her baby?" she whispered at last.
"Yes," he said without hesitation, though she saw his eyebrow flinch at the verb. Murder. She supposed he had preferred to think it terms of execution and extermination, and she could tell in the set of his mouth: he wondered if she judged him now. It cut her to the quick to see it—if she hadn't judged him when he'd first told her, what made him fear it now? Her heart ached for him, for his loneliness, for the seemingly painful burden of his freedom.
She was silent for a long moment, and her eyes wandered back to her sister. "Would you do it again?" she asked gently.
He was still. He knew the right answer, the one she wanted to hear, the one that his Father—apparently—had wanted to hear. He thought of Joy and her silent staring, of Bethany's bright eyes and dark scar. "I do not know," he said at last, and it was truthful.
She nodded, quiet, and for a while they sat in silence. She watched him mull, uncharacteristically, over what she might be thinking, and was surprised that it seemed to matter to him.
To ease him, she said, "We all do…what we think we must. To survive."
Surprise flickered briefly in his set and stoic features. He shook his head, though she knew he thought it would damn him in her eyes. "Angels do not concern themselves with life and death—not like humans do."
She turned toward him, eyes bright with both sadness and laughter. "I wasn't talking about life and death. Not completely, anyway." A pause, and she turned her eyes to the shadows beyond. "Surviving…it's just….you take hold of the thing that is most precious to you, and you try to keep it safe." She flicked a glance to him. "You were trying to honor the word of your Father, weren't you?" It wasn't really a question, and so the yes that resounded in his heart was only an affirmation of the truth which she stated. "I," she said slowly, and her hand crept across the night to brush back a lock of hair from her sister's temple, "I could survive many things. Not one of them includes losing her."
She saw him try to swallow. The corded muscles in his throat looked unnaturally tight. It was a strange condition, unfamiliar to him. She sighed.
"I don't think," she added softly, "that I could have survived leaving you in the desert, either." She hazarded a glance at him, her eyes skittish, though she kept her hand calm and soothing on her sister's cheek. He looked startled at her words, and his gaze jumped to lock with her own, wary and perplexed. She tried to shy away, but he held her eyes, unrelenting. She shuddered. "Even," she whispered then, "if you had killed me after. I know," she added suddenly, strongly, "that you might've. That maybe you even wanted to."
She saw him hold his breath. Her awareness had apparently left him momentarily stunned, though it was almost too fleeting for her to comprehend it. He hadn't imagined, she supposed, that she had for one moment been truly wary, truly frightened. He had thought her approach fueled by ignorance and stupidity, not—whatever it was that really drove her. She wasn't entirely sure herself.
"But if I had left—every night, I think, I would have woken up with questions. Regrets. I would have wondered what happened to you, if you were okay, if I could have helped. If my negligence and—and my fear…" she shivered, and tore her eyes away from his so forcefully that for a moment she felt it, and it hurt—"I would be haunted."
His eyes flickered—distant lightning, deep skies—and she thought he understood, then, if only abstractly—what she was offering. She didn't like to be obvious; it was uncomfortable, to say the words, to acknowledge it openly, and she had long ago learned from her sister that sometimes words of forgiveness only generated more pain. But she wanted to make sure he knew, that he might be secure and safe in the knowledge: that she had canceled whatever debt he might have owed her for the destruction of her family, of her world. Though he had told her he felt no compunctions in doing his duty—though he could not tell her he would not do it again—she had already absolved him. More: she had understood him, what he was, what he might do.
And still, she had lifted him out of the desert, and brought him into her home—where she hoped and prayed he knew he would always have a place.
"Gabriel," she said softly, because she had to, "the gates here will never be closed."
Word Count: 1,471
Completed: May 2, 2011
Urk. Broke the 1000-word limit again. Why do I have a feeling this will be becoming a trend?
Mmm, I think I've re-read and revised this chapter too many times, because I can no longer tell if it's any good. In any case, part of this scene was inspired by another Legion fanfiction I read, though I cannot seem to remember or find which one it was (in either case, it was good, and so if I find it I will gladly credit it and then direct you all to read it). In this other fanfiction, there is a scene where a woman asked Gabriel, "Would you really have killed that woman and her baby?" (or something like this) and he tells her immediately and sincerely that he would have. The other fanfiction goes on to explore this thought, and it's really quite touching and amazing, but the scene kept playing over and over in my head: how else it might have gone, how another human might have responded, and how Gabriel might have changed (or might not have), and so on, so forth.
Since someone expressed interest in the titles of the chapters/drabbles, I also decided I will add a little section at the end of each chapter devoted to the meaning of the titles. In some chapters I may also discuss why I selected a certain title, but it is equally likely that I will leave you only with a literal description of what it means and allow you to draw your own interpretations. So:
****The original title of this chapter was Survival; noun. I wanted it to function as a study of the definition of the word, what it means to Bethany, to Gabriel. But, you know, it just didn't fit into the title-themes I had been running with, and I like the new one just fine. Bethelis the place where Jacob dreamed of his ladder to heaven, with angels ascending and descending upon it, and he created a monument/shrine there and named it, well, Bethel, which means House of God. I thought there were all sorts of fitting allusions here. [c. Genesis 28]