Ari looked over to her brothers as they settled down for the night in a tavern in Chicago. The bartender had taken one look at the five of them with their golden eyes, took out a shotgun, and pointed to a sign near the door: "Neutral Ground". All of the Horsemen nodded their heads and took a table in the corner; this was a place for everyone to meet peacefully. The bartender even came over and made them show him all of their weapons, but only Ari was carrying. Without even a sigh, she unhooked the swords from her back and handed them over to the barkeep for safekeeping while they were in his building. Gaelen looked over the man and promised him that they would do nothing in this establishment to harm anyone, even if they were provoked first. With that, five plates of steak sandwiches and five bottles of ale came up onto the counter. The ale was delicious and the food amazing: one of the perks of having to eat once in a while now that she was spending all of her time on the earth plane was that she got to try out all these new foods and flavours. These steak sandwiches were some of the best that she had ever tasted.
"So, Gaelen, what's the plan?" She looked over to their leader as he pushed his food around his plate. The barkeep looked annoyed but he didn't say a word. Ari took a better look at him, putting her half-eaten sandwich down on the plate. "What's got you down, bro?"
"I'm pissed, Ari." He finally pushed the plate away from him and looked across at his family. "I don't know what to do next. We have no mission on this plane except to create chaos. When the final showdown comes around, we choose our side to use our powers for. Do we side with Heaven and that dick of an angel Michael, or do we side with Hell and the equally dick Lucifer?" He shook his head and ran his hand over his bald pate. "How do we choose, when both sides suck from the get go?"
She twisted the ring on her finger. She had earned it, this new Horseman of Change. A simple gold ring with the Hebrew word for 'five' inscribed on the band. "Why do we have to?" All four of them looked at her incredulously: Chale choked mid-sip on his ale. "Why do we have to choose a side? Why don't we be our own side? Work for neither, but work for both at the same time?" Rika looked over to her; she was certainly living up to her new title.
Gaelen, Rika, Chale, and Tiesen all paused as they paid their bills and walked back out to their cars. She had finally acquired her own vehicle: a storm-grey '67 Impala, a replica of Dean's car save for the color. She slid in and led the procession out of the tavern. They raced down the freeway to a motel and booked a room for them to crash; they would head back to Ipswich in a few days, and to their more permanent base of operations. None of them spoke the rest of the evening, but all of them thought about what Ari had suggested.
She didn't sleep that night; instead, she just sat back against the window and watched the night sky, the thunderstorms as they roared through the sky. She always loved the thunderstorms; Lucifer used to tell her when she was a child that thunder was God pacing in his library when something was wrong, and that lightening was him talking to his lieutenants. She knew better now, but even still, Lucifer and Michael always had her back until the Fall. Then everything went screwy.
"Ariel." She didn't turn at the sound of the voice, that very familiar voice. She just chuckled a few times as she felt him stand there.
"The mighty Michael, come down to visit his lowly younger sister." She cocked an eyebrow and turned to stand, her duster swirling around her feet as she leaned against the window sill. "What do you require of me now?" That was a joke, of course. Michael couldn't command squat from her and they both knew it. She, however, just wanted to be spiteful for a few moments.
"Why?" His voice was shot, hoarse. He looked so sorrowful that it was almost pitiful. Almost. He wasn't in a human vessel, but had created his own, like she used to be able to, for this quick family visit. He looked like he did when she saw him for the first time after her service was completed: golden-brown hair, hazel eyes that used to match her own, and a weary smile.
"Why what, older brother? You need be a tad more specific. I don't read angels' minds anymore." She grinned sinisterly. This was so much fun!
"Why this?" He motioned around at the room, at the sleeping Horsemen next door, at the two swords sitting against the wall next to her.
At that, she turned serious. "Oh, changed teams, then? That's more specific." She pushed herself off the sill and led him outside the room. She didn't want her brothers to wake up and try to defend her: this was something that she had to do on her own.
When they both were outside, she turned away and let the rain fall on her face. She needed to think of a succinct way to tell Michael everything that had happened to her since last they talked. "When I was in Hell, when I was slowly becoming Afriel, I was befriended by the Four Horsemen. They treated Afriel and me as the same person, because we were in a sense. War and Famine often had excellent debates for Afriel to engage in, keeping both of us human in a way. Death, even though he was imprisoned on a deeper level of Hell away from Lucifer, could still commune with me through his brothers. Even Pestilence wanted to talk to me, but sometimes he would just sit and watch as we would be tortured. Alastair left them alone; they are so much more powerful than he ever was. When Afriel emerged and began torturing, they still stuck around and kept me company. To hear them speak without screaming was, what I came to believe, what kept me sane during those thousand two hundred years.
"They watched out for me when I was abandoned by Heaven. When I was pulled out of the Pit, I never forgot about them even as I did your bidding. I missed our conversations. When you ordered me to guard the Winchesters, when you exiled me from the heavens for questioning and for daring to think, then I finally had enough of blindly following orders. What? You didn't think that I would catch on to your manipulations of me?" She shook her head at him when he tried to debate that. "I bided my time, performing the role of the dutiful younger sister; all the while, I questioned and I doubted everything about my life. The only things that made sense were the Horsemen, and how they took care of me as I rotted in Hell and how you did nothing.
"I didn't want a repeat of the last War. Remember that one," she turned back to him with hate in her unearthly golden eyes, walking in slow circles around him, "when you and Lucifer demanded that I choose a side? When I followed you because that was where Castiel and my Father were? That ripped me apart! Why would you even think to ask that of me: to choose between my two brothers, the ones that raised me with my father's hand? To ask me to choose between the one that taught me everything, and the one that always had my back? I broke that day, Michael. I was never the same. That look on Lucifer's face when I turned my back on him, my oldest brother and my mentor, that scarred my heart and those scars will never leave there. When Alastair fell, when he took me with him, that was the beginning of the end of everything.
She turned away from him. "Now that I'm out of both gigs, I'm gonna choose the ones that are not of Heaven or Hell, the ones that actually gave a shit about me. When I found War, Famine, and Pestilence back in Carthage, there were no questions, no demands, other than what had taken me so long? I was the one to release Death, not Lucifer! There are no contracts, no memorandums, no 'discipline' if I screwed up: there is only what we want to do and when we want to do it." She stopped and faced him. "Is that good enough a reason, brother?" She spat the word out like the poison it was.
Michael was silent for the longest time, just standing there in the rain. "But I loved you..."
She punched him in the jaw, knocking him to the ground. "Lucifer loved me, too! I never stopped loving both of you, because you're my blood. But you don't see me at his side! I don't care anymore about your little spat. Lucifer was upset, yes, because God chose a flawed race over us! Our Father ignored us while Adam and Eve roamed around the Garden. He fell because he couldn't, and still can't, believe that this is the superior race! You fought because you were Dad's little soldier, who did everything he wanted without question." She summoned the Sword of Michael to her hand; turning it in her hand for a few minutes, she tossed it at his feet. "Take this back; you'll need it. I'll keep Lucifer's, for now. After all, it was the last present you gave me when you branded me."
As she walked back to her room, Michael stood. "What about the Winchesters?"
"What about them, Michael?" She stopped but didn't turn.
"It is your job to protect them, to make sure that they followed their destiny. To make sure that the Apocalypse goes the right way." Now he looked like he was begging. How... debasing for the Commander of the Host to beg of a Horseman.
"Dean and Sam can take care of themselves. Without me in the picture, then they can make their own choices, as they always have before." She snorted. "And that whole bit about destiny? That's a load of 'bite me'! If there was such a thing as destiny, then you should ask our Father the next time you see him why I'm the only creature on the planet without one! Why there's no plan for me?"
There, she had finally told him her last secret. She turned back to him a final time, watching the anguish of his feelings play out on his face. "I'm the Horseman of Change, brother, and I live to change up the plans that others have made. I live to make people face the unknown. Just like our Father made me face the unknown when he told me that there was no plan for me, that I was simply an extra in that little threesome of ours."
"And she's one of us now." She felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Tiesen, looking at the angel with his hawkish eyes. She felt the others come and stand with her in the pouring rain. All of them had their blades out, but none of them pointed them at Michael. They were serving more as warnings then actual threats. "Now scat, angel boy. Before I show you why I'm called War."
Michael took one last look at her before zapping back to heaven. She turned to Gaelen, Tiesen, Rika, and Chale, and smiled at them all. "What say we get some more sleep, eh?"
All mentions of Gaelen, Rika, Chale, and Tiesen belong to silver ruffian and the story "The Black Horse and The Cherry Tree".