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 XXXII: Whisper
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.
After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake.
After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire.
And after the fire came a still, small voice…and the voice said to him, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"
1 Kings 19: 11-13

"Gabriel."

He looked up sharply, startled, and his eyes searched the strange little garden. He realized abruptly that the small, woodsy copse was actually an abandoned shrine, once well-tended and well-loved. Broken white statues gleamed in the desert moonlight: the Holy Family, and St Francis, and a dozen others which he knew by face but not by name, or whose likenesses had changed so much over the centuries that he no longer recognized them. Wilting succulents flowered in once-artfully arranged clusters, and he found himself in the middle of what had been a man-made waterfall and pool, ringed with shining flat stones. A holy place, carefully cultivated by tender hands and a God-glorying heart. Was it any wonder he'd chosen this place to surrender?

She calls people out of their pain.

"Gabriel," she said again, and the moon played tricks on his eyes, on the flawed beauty of Bethany's face. For a moment she seemed haloed with light. Her eyes were deeper, wider, more golden, the lashes thicker and darker; her mouth was full and inviting and unruined. The scar traced her features like a lover's caress, beautiful in its own right. She gleamed in the silvery shadows: white in the darkness. Her legs were smooth and gleaming columns beneath the raggedly-cut edges of her shorts, and her hair was a fall of dark sky behind her. Her sweatshirt fell off one sloping shoulder, which shone in the moonlight.

"I am here," he told her, his voice low and rasping, almost unidentifiable. She looked like she belonged in this place: holy, sacred, secret.

She climbed carefully down into the dry pool: legs flashing, barefoot among the twigs and stones and parched mud. Dust licked her toes. She knelt before him, so close that the white globes of her knees settled between his fists, still clenched in the earth. For what seemed like an eternity—to Gabriel, who was intimately acquainted with eternity—they sat in silence.

"I executed my brother," he said at last, stiffly.

Her eyes sought his in the darkness.

"I," he clarified, struggling with the term, with the reality, "murdered him."

She held his gaze, unflinching.

"The dearest and—closest to me, of all my remaining brethren." He paused. "Though we were at war, he did not expect me to deal a death-blow." He wrestled for words in the darkness, and when he couldn't find them, he fell silent, aching and sodden with an anguish he couldn't give voice to.

She continued to kneel before him, a tiny and delicate gargoyle sitting on its haunches, and held his dark, glacial eyes with her own. "I miss my sister."

"Yes," he said into the darkness.

"It's so empty here."

"Yes."

"And lonely."

"Yes."

"My own shortcomings have wounded her, have cost me her; I betrayed her, and Gabriel…and I can't ever go home, and I can't ever take it back, and I can't seem to make it any better."

"Yes," he said, and didn't recognize his own voice in the darkness, like broken thunder.

"Gabriel," she said very softly, so softly he almost didn't hear her over the roar of his own heart, "you are very, very good." Her hand came out in the darkness; her ring finger kissed his face three times: at his temple, the far corner of his jaw, the side of his chin. It was almost a caress. For a moment, silence reigned, and the conviction she had just uttered—with complete certainty, and gentleness—washed through the air like a sweet, clean, incoming tide. "You are very good," she whispered. "Deep inside—where you're afraid that you're not."

Her words were crippling: he lurched toward her, and she held one arm open. Like a felled tree whose branches come down with it, he tumbled forward: hard-limbed, broken-winged. Her arms wrapped around him quickly, pulling him in toward her, welcoming him without reservation; her fingers found and gently stroked the soft hairs at the back of his neck while her other hand carefully smoothed his sharp-edged feathers. He wept as he never had before, his hands knotting in her dark hair: for all he had done, for all he had hurt, for all he had lost. She murmured things he didn't hear, but which sounded like I have you and I'm here.

Word Count: 718
Completed: May 27th, 2011
The "famous scene." This is an image that I (very roughly) sketched, way back when, and the link to view it is below (copy & paste into your browser and remove the spaces). It's not that good, but it will give you a bit of a visual if you want it.
http :/ fyrefly-nyxa .deviantart .com /# /d3figm5
****The title again is in conjunction with the verse, where God is found not in the wrath of wind, the power of the earthquake, or the burning of fire—but in a gentle and quiet whisper, calling the prophet's name. [c. 1 Kings 19]