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 XXVI: Viaticum
…And there arose a great wailing throughout all of Egypt,
for there was not a house without someone dead.
Exodus 12: 30
The here and now suddenly intensified—grew bright and sharp and hard and real, even as Bethany was vaguely aware of Gabriel rising heavily to his feet.
"No," she said quietly, as if she could deny the very world around them. The word was a bitter lie. "No. No. Gabriel, no—" and then she was running, stumbling over her own legs, which suddenly seemed so clumsy for a creature so steeped in grace. He caught her body before she reached her sister: reached out and plucked her up in his arms by her waist, her feet swinging upward off the ground as she struggled in mid-air. She flailed against him; he held her anyway, cradling her back against his armored chest, and he thought he could feel everything inside her—her lungs, her cells, the bones around her heart. And he wondered—bright and hot and quick as lightning—if she had felt the same thing when she'd held onto him that first night, if she'd struggled to hold all the broken parts of him inside.
If she'd felt her sister like this, pinned in her arms, possessed by an angel.
"Do not look," he said, turning her in his arms and holding her chin with one calloused hand, forcing her gaze to his. He could not let her see Joy's blank face, the coldness of her blood-misted lips, the emptiness around the eyes. But Bethany's gaze kept skittering sideways, trying to see; they were wider than he'd ever thought possible, and panicked like an animal's, and he was afraid—was that what it was? He felt sick inside with the feel of it—afraid that he might lose these pieces of her, like small chips of bone, and never be able to put her back together. She twisted against him, trying to get away, to go to her sister's side. "Do not look, Bethany." With one arm he held her firmly; with his other hand he anchored her face against his chestplate.
But she was already screaming, her throat so ragged with it that he thought she might have torn something inside. It was the sound of Egypt on a desolate night, years and years ago: a wordless, begging wail. She fought him, and he let her, at a loss. He didn't know what to do. He felt like the whole universe was laced together with grief.
And regret.
And loneliness.
She kept screaming, not fighting now but clinging to him. Her blunt human nails scraped furrows into his arms and the back of his neck as she tried to crawl inside his skin. Her hands knotted in his hair, in the buckles and laces of his armor, in the soft inner feathers of his wings—as though she couldn't trust him to hold on: as though she would die if he let her go.
He gazed around, empty in a way he hadn't felt since the moment he knew he'd failed his Father. He closed his eyes and felt the marks she'd clawed into his skin, and he thought they hurt more than any wound he'd ever received in battle, more even than Michael's sword piercing his side. And strangely, they didn't seem to hurt enough. He held her, his hands broad and soft on the bones of her back, his fingertips finding the shape of her scapulae.
"I held on," she panted, breathless, her voice rasping in her throat. She was shuddering, her hands scrabbling against his wings, his back—trying to find purchase, some sort of safety, some sort of haven from the pain. Her knees scraped against his abdomen as though she would climb him; he knew—intimately—the pain in her belly, the feeling she was trying to rid herself of, as though something was clawing its way out of her. "Gabriel, please, I held on—"
Her words reopened the ugly wound in his heart. A shudder racked his large frame; he shook convulsively in spite of himself. There was so much emptiness, barrenness, and he was suddenly so far from home.
"I am sorry," he said slowly, and meant it more deeply than he'd ever thought possible, though he was no longer certain what he was sorry for. The apocalypse, yes; and the sundering of her small family, and the ruination that had sent them on this journey in the first place, that had created a world full of raiders and strangers. But he was sorry, too, for the ragged hole inside her now, for the ragged hole inside himself—as though his last vestige of heaven had been skinned away.
She moaned low in her throat, her head rolling against his shoulder like that of a wounded animal. The sound was an agony, and his hands tightened on her fragile body. "Bethany," he repeated. "I am sorry."
He catapulted into the air then, taking her with him, leaving behind the sunburnt street and the place where the little girl lay.
Word Count: 830
Completed: May 16th, 2011