Whirling.
Raphael has no better word to describe it.
Everything is whirling around him and within him, like the world has suddenly gone crazy and he doesn´t like it. Not at all.
If he didn´t knew better he would say that he is feeling sick, but angels don´t feel sick. That kind of feelings is there for humans, for mud monkeys, Gods afterthought, almost as bad as hell spawn.
So he tries to ignore it, but annoyingly some part of him doesn´t want to. Some part of him wants to dive into it, feel more, feel as much as possible, suck it in, like he is dying of thirst.
Not like angels die of thirst. That´s a mud monkey problem too.
Still, he has tried not to feel anything for so long. So long he got used to being empty, even learned to be glad about it, because if you can´t feel anything, at least no one can hurt you. At least you are safe. Mindless soldier, Michael calls it, but at least mindless soldiers don´t hurt. They jam it all into a layer of indifference and carry on. Soldier on.
And no one can hear the screams from within the layer. Not even Michael. Or Michael just doesn´t care. That´s alright, because it´s not like Raphael cares. If he doesn´t care about anyone, then no one should be constricted to care about him.
But somehow this whole Gabriel story is messing him up. It´s messing him up in a way that normally only Michaels remarks are able to, the only thing that still cuts through the layer the only thing that still makes him flinch and hurts him every single time.
There is a certain irony in it, he supposes, even though he doesn´t get the joke. The only times he feels alive, the only times he cares about anything, the only times someone cuts through all the layers to the part that has somehow, scared and scarred, managed to stay Raphael the healer, are when Michael beats him down, tells him he is a mindless soldier, worthless, useless, worth dead as much as alive.
But this is somehow different, somehow worse than Michael. Michael makes him feel worthless, small and beaten up, but this whirling, this sickness is something new. Something he has never felt before.
And he is becoming addicted to it way to fast.
Gabriel might be alive.
Michael thinks Gabriel is alive.
Michael has lost his mind.
He wishes he could say that there is some joy he gets out of that thought, that he is somehow desperate to see his little brother, that he is searching for him with all his power, that he can´t think of anything else and the reason why no one notices is that he has become a master in covering up his emotions in front of Michael.
But it wouldn´t be the truth.
The truth is, that some part of Raphael thinks it´s his duty to react like that, also because Michael clearly expects it from him and Michaels words are law. Some part of him, the same part that is getting addicted to the whirling, also wants to react like this and is ready to pretend, to conjure up an image of what he should feel, so maybe if he pretends long enough it can really become a part of him, just a little bit. Just enough to satisfy the deep buried healer part left in him.
But honestly, the emotions are just not there.
He can´t relate to Michaels obsession, to his desire to find Gabriel. Yes, there is the whirling, but the whirling is something else entirely and he could stop it anytime he wants to.
He doesn´t care about Gabriel or about the past. Can´t even remember really remember Gabriel or the garden, the time it was just the four of them. It´s just blurry images here and there with no meaning attached to them.
Michael might be lost in the past, but Raphael doesn´t even remember the past and sometimes that worries him.
He should remember, shouldn´t he? Michael certainly does, but then Michael is the eldest and the leader of the heavenly host and his superior, so maybe it´s just natural that Michael remembers and Raphael doesn´t. But then, some of the younger angels seem to remember the time before Lucifer turned traitor and he should have a better memory then them. Shouldn´t he?
But then again, the ones who remember tend to be the rebellious ones, the ones that need to be reeducated at some point, some of them more than once, so maybe it´s for the best that Raphael doesn´t remember. He never hesitates to sign someone over to reeducation, but it certainly doesn´t seem like something he would like to experience himself.
He thinks of Castiel and that surprises him, because he normally sees the younger angels as a uniform mass, but Castiel has the unfortunate talent of sticking out. He also has the unfortunate talent of sticking to the wrong things.
He remembers dragging Castiel to Naomi for the third time in a row, because that fledgling somehow still remembered the time before Lucifers rebellion and continued blabbing about it. "How is that even possible?", he remembers shouting at Naomi, while twisting his fingers
into Castiels neck, the younger angel shaking with fear and pain, but somehow still not crying out. "He was already reeducated twice and he was no more then a fledgling at the time! If you can´t perform your duty, maybe I should report YOU to Michael"
Naomi didn´t break. She even had the impudence to tell Raphael that Castiel had behaved well enough after the last time and that Michael hadn´t seen another reeducation necessary, so maybe SHE should report HIM. To which Raphael answered that even if Castiel didn´t try to criticize Michael again, he clearly still remembered and that it was better to be safe than sorry. Naomi just shrugged at that and took her impudence to a new level by saying: "Or you are just jealous, because he remembers and you don´t. You think he has no idea whats going on, but you aren´t any better yourself. Now excuse me, I have work to do"
He was really close to reporting her then, but her words had struck him in a way he hadn´t thought possible.
Jealous.
He wasn´t jealous, why should he be?
Lower angels were almost as bad as mud monkeys, the rebellious ones even more so, why should he be jealous? Naomi clearly had no idea what she was talking about and she dared accuse HIM of having no idea? He was closest to Michael, second in command, he knew everything that was going on. She was just trying to cover up her failure of getting Castiel in line.
Still the comment got him way to deep and for some time he was thinking about the possibility of Michael sending him over to Naomi st some point in the past and that being the reason why he doesn´t remember, or why, if he does, the memories have no meaning to him.
But that´s impossible. Michael would never allow that. Punish Raphael himself yes, but reeducation like any regular angel? Raphael doesn´t think so. Also if that was the case, Naomi would have gloated way more. For the one who´s duty it is to reeducate the ones who can´t keep their mouth shut, she is incredibly bad at keeping her own mouth shut.
He definitely should report her for something!
But first he has to instruct a garrison about searching for Gabriel. Gabriel is of course dead, but Michael gave the command to search for him anyway and Raphael would never dare disobey.
Not ever again.
So he stands in front of the garrison, telling them about the encounter as briefly as possible and hopefully without making Michael seem like a lunatic. He also leaves out why Michael was on earth in the first place, because Michael hasn´t announced plans for a possible apocalypse yet and there is no need to disturb the soldiers.
No one asks anyway. No one ever asks about anything. Raphael looks into the faces as empty as his and feels just the familiar hole inside him. There are no sensations over the angel bond, if the angels are emotionally reacting to the commands about searching for Gabriel, they are hiding it well.
As they should. Angels are soldiers. No need for emotions.
Yet Raphael can´t suppress a little jolt of righteousness, when he sees Castiel in the garrison, fitting in perfectly, his eyes as empty as everyone else. Finally that one is under control. And the reason he is glad about that is NOT that he was jealous or anything. It´s his duty to keep everyone in line and every rebel is a danger, so it´s only natural to be glad about preventing one.
Damn Naomi.
He has to other things to think about. Like, how to find Gabriel. He has to give orders about that and he will have to improvise. He doesn´t like improvising. Not at all.
"Search for big manifestations of power", he commands. "He is an archangel, his power will have to show somehow"
"But if he were still alive wouldn´t his presence have shown over the emergency frequency long ago?"
Everyone freezes harder than seems possible. No one ever asks questions about anything. But sometimes things like this happen, an angel not able to control his thoughts and accidentally sending them over said emergency frequency, that every angel is permanently linked to. Depending on the thought, it can sent you to reeducation.
Still, Michael decides about reeducation, not Raphael, so Raphael is about to report the angel, whose name he doesn´t even remember (something long, maybe 14 or 16 syllables) when he hears himself answer: "No, he learned to turn that off a long time ago"
The next moment he has the strong urge to turn himself in.
With one action he has at the same time legitimized rebellion and told a whole garrison that it is possible to turn the emergency frequency off, something only the archangels should know about. And in all honesty, not even them.
So he turns himself and the whole garrison over to Michael, before sending them off to search for Gabriel.
Michael of course shouts at him and calls him a mindless soldier again, but better that than lie to Michael. He can not lie to Michael. Michael is his leader and he won´t lie to him or keep anything from him ever.
His stupid mistake is long taken care of when he stops for the first time to think about why he suddenly knew that Gabriel had learned to turn off the emergency frequency before his death and he realizes it´s one of the blurry pictures, the few things he remembers about Gabriel.
Gabriel and Lucifer sneaking off to earth and Michael getting a panic attack because he is unable to reach them, something that has never happened before.
Everything is ridiculously wrong about that picture.
Why would Lucifer want to get to earth? Why would anyone want to get to earth? And Michael would never get a panic attack, it´s absolutely ridiculous.
Snorting he dismisses the picture and has a tiny feeling that he should care, when it blurs even more and leaves him with one less memory.
But he still can´t bring himself to care.