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 XXX: Babel
Then the Lord said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?"
"I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?"
Genesis 4:9

Later, he lay beside her on top of the still-covered bed. She'd found an old man's button-down shirt to replace her own sopping clothes, which she'd carefully draped over the shower-rod to dry. They weren't touching, simply side-by-side in the quiet, watching as the sun set through the picture-window and cast slanting shadows of tangerine and pink across the walls. She smelled like soap now, and high skies, and the wind at dawn. Her hair curled damply on the bedspread.

"Gabriel," she called to him softly, and he knew she was thinking of her sister again.

"I am here," he responded, just as softly. His voice was like thunder in the distance, and he tried to gentle it for her. She was quiet for a moment, as if just hearing his words were enough. And then:

"She will never sit in a bathtub with me again."

His eyes fell softly shut. He could tell her she was wrong; he could remind her that she would see her sister, much sooner than it felt right now. Once you have tasted eternity, fifty years or a hundred seems only like a day. But he remembered—no, even still today, he felt it—the poignancy of the possibility that he might never again see his Father, his own brother.

That he might never see Joy.

And suddenly, saying such a thing to her seemed cruel and empty-hearted.

He hesitated, and then reached into the edge of his tunic. The photograph was folded, and singed at the edges from the heat of the holy fire that poured through his veins like magma, but he carefully opened it up and handed it to her in the darkness. She took the photo slowly, wonderingly, and he felt obligated to say, "Joy bid me take it," lest she think he stole it from her treasure chest of his own accord.

She touched the photo reverently, as though she could feel the warmth of her sister's skin, her laughter through the slick paper. "And you kept it by your heart?" she whispered softly.

He stared into the darkness above them. "Bethany—"

"If Joy wanted you to have it—"

"I am with you," he reminded her suddenly, his voice strong in the darkness. "As long as I have you, I have this picture, do I not?"

She was silent, and he could feel how torn she was between longing and her strange understanding of fairness.

"Keep it safe for me," he said quietly, coaxingly, and she pressed it to her collarbone, her other hand reaching for his in the darkness, gripping him so tightly it was almost painful, in spite of his superior strength.

"It was my fault," Bethany told him after a moment, and the pressure on his hand had not eased up. "I let her go."

Her words fell on him like a sword-blade. "Bethany," he said, "you were not even present." He thought of Michael holding him down, and he thought of Joy holding out her hand to him, and the sorrow was heavy on his tongue, within his wings.

"Not—this time." She paused, and hesitated. "Before. During—the apocalypse. If I had—caught hold of her sooner, all those people—our parents—they might not have died, and she wouldn't have thought there blood was on her hands." She turned her head; her hair sounded like silk sliding against the bed. She looked across at him in the dark, her bright eyes begging. "Gabriel—what are we if we can't protect our brothers and sisters?"

He knew—he knew—she wasn't referring to him, but her words laid him open, laid him bare. She might not admit it, but he understood that she was equating this new loss—Joy's death—to another death, months-old: a death of the spirit, which afterward made her sister stare into an ugly nothing, unblinking for hours on end. He understood that she was holding herself responsible for both. And he thought of Sammael leaping from the threshold of heaven without one glance to spare for his beloved brothers, and he thought of his blade sliding easily through Michael—and he knew that one day he would have to face what he had done, the open wound he'd hidden even from himself, which Bethany's First Aid sutures could not reach.

We must protect them; we must guard their hearts—for they are our brothers and sisters.
…they are only lost.

He half-rolled. In the darkness, his eyes sought hers: blue gas-flames to sleeping suns. He took both her fragile human hands in his—engulfed them in his own—and pressed her knuckles to his mouth, not noticing how her eyes widened.

"Bethany," he rumbled. "By your logic, I am responsible for all the fallen angels."

It took her a moment to understand him, and when she did, he watched in quiet awe as the myriad emotions played out across her face. Anguished empathy, and repentance, and sorrow—

—and love. He was on eye-level with her now, and it was startling what a difference it made: she was infinitely lovelier when he wasn't looking down on her.

"Gabriel, you are not—"

"Bethany, I do not say this so you might offer me comfort, but so that you might listen to your heart and what it tells you. When you read Father's Word, every book of it tells you to think with your heart, to know in your heart, to believe with your heart. Your mind is a tool, and my brother—the one now called Lucifer—he will use it to trick you, to silence the language of God which speaks from your heart." He looked up at her, his eyes solemn and flashing, like lightning reflected in blue mountain pools at night. "When the voice in your head tells you to doubt yourself—when it calls you unworthy because you failed to hold on to her—or because of the scar on your face, which you told me once was made from love—or for some sin for which you have already been forgiven—when it tells you this, that is the lie. You are made to be worthy, to be the pinnacle of His creation, His beloved. When that poisonous voice speaks, Bethany, you must listen instead to all that was made for you and in you, in glory and innocence and grace. You must listen to your heart."

And as he spoke the words, he knew how true they were, and he wondered briefly why he had not realized it before, or considered it in conjunction with all the other humans he'd intended to slay.

Now her honey-colored eyes shone with tears in the dark; they glistened on her lashes in starlike clusters. "I don't know how anymore," she whispered. "I can't hear it. And if I could, I don't think I know the—the language of God."

"Then I will speak it for you," he said determinedly, "and tell you all the things that I have come to know you are."

Word Count: 1,178
Completed: May 22nd, 2011
I am going on a much-needed vacation for this week (by "vacation" I mean a friend is coming to visit and we are getting new tattoos and visiting an old professor and being lazy in the local haunts). I will try to get at least one update over the course of the next few days, but no promises—I hope this double-shot of comfort with tide you over!

In other news, I am playing around with the idea of a Smokin'Aces oneshot. A lot of my projects never get finished, and it's still in preliminary stages (and who knew? There happens to be a sister in it…again. I am getting predictable. NO TRAGEDY THOUGH OMG!)…but if you're interested, you might wanna subscribe or check back at my author page in a couple weeks (I'll keep you updated here too if I get around to posting it before this fic is done). Just in case any of you are more "Kevin Durand" fans than "Legion" fans. It will be a lot different from this fic, though (clearly).
Upcoming chapters:

XXXI: Forsaken. Gabriel mourns.
XXXII: Whisper. A still, small voice pierces the storm.
XXXIII: Revelations. Gabriel finds God in the wilderness.
Interlude IX: Hemmed. "You are searching for a reason for the apocalypse." "Among other things."
XXXIV: Metatron. Gabriel is called home.
XXXV: Psalmist. Gabriel tells a story.
XXXVI: St. Peter at the Gates. Reuniting with a brother.
XXXVII: Prodigal. God speaks.
XXXVIII: Joseph, Reuben. Another reunion.
XXXIX: The Stone is Rolled Away. Gabriel comes home.
Epilogue: Seventh Day. A couple enjoys each others' company in a Garden.

****Babel is the name of the tower erected by Noah's descendents, which was intended to reach up to heaven. God thwarted them by confusing their language (hence the colloquialism: to babble), but it is said that before this moment, all people spoke the same language as God and the angels. [c. Genesis 11]