Michael doesn´t like earth and never did. Well, of course he was interested in it at first, like he was interested in everything Father did and since He saw earth as so important, Michael tried to see it the same way, but he just never got comfortable down there. It´s impossible to avoid humans on earth, they are everywhere, messy and unpredictable, making it always seem like he is a step behind and can never really grasp what is going on.
In heaven he is a leader and while he doesn´t always know what is going on there either, there are clear rules and routines, created by himself over the time, that he can stick to, if in doubt. He has already tried to come up with everything that could possibly go wrong in heaven and prevented it by making heaven as predictable as possible, perfecting the system over and over again.
Those are his shields. Routines and rules and prayers. Incredible how well they can protect you from reality.
In heaven he has control. On earth he has nothing.
So if someone had told him a few weeks ago, that he would spend more time on earth than strictly necessary and stall time so he wouldn´t have to go back to heaven, he would have thought that person crazy.
But now his whole life in heaven has collapsed and the only person he thinks crazy right now, is himself.
Raphael and Naomi and so many others are haunting him, while Gabriel is standing on the side starring at him in utter disgust. Gabriel, his sweet little brother, who he has just found out is alive and whom he almost got back to heaven; he was so close, so close.
He doesn´t deserve Gabriel anyway.
Oh, now going into self criticism all of the sudden Lucifer taunts. Bit late for that now, don´t you think?
Michael grinds his teeth, trying to block out the voice that can´t really be Lucifer, the voice that is a constant reminder of himself going mad. He has tried to drown it out with prayer, but it just started taunting his prayers, which was worse then it taunting his other thoughts, so he stopped praying and now he feels horrible, like he is shutting Father out and Father will be angry with him for it.
"You can´t be real", he says as firmly as possible, asking himself why he is even talking to that voice. If it isn´t real, he shouldn´t answer to it. He may be going mad, but that doesn´t mean that he can just stop holding himself to certain standards.
"You missed out on Gabriel for millenniums, because you thought the tugs didn´t mean anything and that the signs of him being alive couldn´t be real not-Lucifer points out. You just don´t want me to be real, in fact you never wanted me at all, did you?
Michael almost tells him to shut up, but doesn´t, officially because he will no longer talk to a voice that isn´t there and unofficially because, if it should somehow impossibly really be Lucifer, he doesn´t want to shut him up, after making him suffer in the cage for so long. He has made enough people suffer.
He thinks of Gabriel and the mere thought hurts insanely. He thought his little brother being dead would be the worst pain possible, but somehow being rejected by him is even worse. And that Gabriel has a point in despising him makes the situation even more painful.
He knows that Gabriel is right in some way and feels incredibly bad about what he did to Raphael, but still, some part of his mind doesn´t want to admit his guilt, or knows that he couldn´t live with it and is still going on about it all being Raphael´s fault for rebelling and about reeducation being a good and necessary system.
He loves that part because it makes everything easier and hates it for what it makes out of him.
Still, he can´t face Raphael right now. Raphael knows now what has happened to him – what you did to him! – orat least parts of it and that changes everything. He can´t have this conversation right now, he just can´t, not when he also has to deal with the raw pain of loosing Gabriel again and increasingly also with the possibility that his little brother could have come back all that time, but chose not to.
So he aimlessly wanders around earth, switching continents like humans tap their fingers, not really concentrating on it, trapped it his own world, where Lucifer still rants and doesn´t allow him to pray in peace, which is driving Michael even more crazy, than he is anyway at that point.
He doesn´t care where he is going anyway, as long as it isn´t heaven. He briefly wonders who is running heaven right now, or if heaven is running itself, but for the first time since he took his place as the leader of heaven after Raphael came for him in the garden, he can´t bring himself to care. He has looked after everything for so long, heaven can last some time without him.
Aren´t you supposed to be the responsible one? You are just as careless as Father. "Lucifer, that´s blasphemy." I am the devil, you made me the devil and now you complain that I blaspheme? I thought that was my job! Lucifer doesn´t even sound angry or taunting any more, just tired and frustrated beyond belief. Michael almost feels bad for him, till he remembers that the voice isn´t really Lucifer.
He still apologizes a few minutes later, just in case.
Places flicker by, humans, landscapes, buildings and he can focus on none of it. Somewhere some of the younger angels are calling for him. There is confusion, that is step by step turning into utter distress coming from Raphael, and now and then there is a painful tug that could be Gabriel or not. It´s too faint to locate it anyway, so he ignores it together with everything else, and keeps on moving. Running, Michael. You are running away, like Daddy did. If he could only get Lucifer to shut up.
And then suddenly there is one place that is different from the rest. He doesn´t realize it at first, flickering past it, till suddenly a painfully familiar feeling hits and he starts to ask himself, if he has accidentally gone back to heaven and to that place in heaven of all places. His subconsciousness couldn´t possibly have done something that significant, could it?
He is getting curious, even though curiosity was always Lucifer´s and Gabriel´s strong trait, Michael himself always settled more for safety. Carefully he traces his own steps back and when he finds the place that felt different, he has to gasp involuntarily.
He is standing on a meadow about halfway up a mountain and looking over a vale, with a quick river running through it. He isn´t very good with temperatures, but even he can feel the pleasant warmth of the air, made even more pleasant by the cool wind, blowing gently through the vale. There is something surreal about how green the grass is, how blue the water of the river, how clear the sky.
It is definitely not the garden and now that he is here for a longer time, it doesn´t feel so much like it anymore, as it did when he was just flickering by. Still, he can understand why he thought to have accidentally landed in the garden the first time around. There is something similar to the atmosphere, a kind of peace that he hasn´t felt for a very long time and that he struggles to embrace.
It isn´t really a conscious decision, but suddenly he is lying in the meadow, breathing in the scent of the fresh grass. One part of his brain is telling him that he is in Swizzerland and that the nearest human being is a shepherd on the other side of the mountain and how far away the mountain chain on the other side of the vale is, but he doesn´t care about that part anymore.
He stares at the opposite mountain chain, somehow certain that Gabriel would see something in the shape of it, the Gabriel from the garden at least, since he doesn´t seem to know his little brother any more, and wondering what it would be. He wonders if this place was modeled after the garden, or if it could have been the other way around. When did Father start creating earth? He honestly has no idea, it´s not like Father ever talked very much to him.
He realizes that he is letting his thoughts drift in a way he hasn´t allowed himself for millenniums, he is loosing control, but somehow he doesn´t panic. He doesn´t even try to stop it. Yes, there are some painful thoughts and everything remotely related to the future and how he can ever face Raphael or Gabriel again, hurts insanely, but there are also random thoughts about the garden and a better time and he finally just allows them to wash over him.
Maybe this is going insane. Lying down and loosing control, not caring about heaven or the world, because it feels like everything that could go wrong, has already gone wrong.
That thought shouldn´t be as liberating as it is.
Michael doesn´t even realize it, when he begins to cry without a sound.
The sun is going down over the vale, filling it with a soft orange light, when he realizes that he has succeeded in pushing the bonds into the background and that Lucifer (or not-Lucifer) hasn´t said anything for hours.
He has spent hours alone, without feeling the bonds and without praying. He touches his cheeks, slightly surprised at the wetness he encounters, feeling numb and empty, but astoundingly comfortable. It is as if the vale had pushed back his emotions for a while to protect him, allowing him a few moments of peace.
He gets up, taking in a shaking breath and feeling slightly more comfortable than before. The problems he has to face don´t seem impossible any more, just...difficult. He can deal with difficult. Difficult means that there IS a chance of success.
"I will do better", he tells himself, not sure if he is praying or not. "I will fix what I did wrong and find a way of making Father and Gabriel proud at the same time. I will get my little brother home"
He wonders if he should add something about Lucifer, but he can´t go to that place. Not yet.
For one moment the whole world seems manageable, then a sharp pain shots through him, so sudden and so intense, that he falls to his knees half expecting to see an angel blade sticking out of his chest. It´s the bond, he realizes in a blurry haze, it is Gabriel, oh Father, please no, it is Gabriel and Gabriel is screaming, filling Michael´s whole mind with fear and pain and Michael is up and about within seconds, racing towards the scream, blindly trusting the bond to lead him, because Gabriel still is his sweet little brother and if something has happened to him, because Michael has scared him away, he is never, not in all of eternity, going to forgive himself.
To his surprise and horror, he can actually make out words over the bond. He hasn´t been able to do that with Gabriel since, well, since Lucifer´s rebellion. Gabriel has apparently suppressed the bond ever since and they didn´t exactly part on good terms in the warehouse, so the only reason for Gabriel to use it now so intensely is that either he can´t control it anymore or that he is grabbing for the last straw, two equally terrifying options.
Michael listens as closely as he can and everything inside him freezes. "Yes, alright, I agreed at first, but I changed my mind. Am I not allowed to change my mind? I can´t do that to him, he is my brother, Kali, please!" The scream that follows is absolutely heartbreaking.
Kali! He never trusted that damn goddess, -who in his right mind would trust a goddess of destruction?-, and he was right! He was right and now she is hurting Gabriel. He shouldn´t have let his brother go like that, he shouldn´t have wasted time on the meadow, he should have…
He should have really found them by now.
Confused and driven half mad by Gabriel´s screams, that are now echoing through his skull again, Michael forces himself to freeze and look around. Mexico, or at least he thinks so. What would Kali do with Gabriel in Mexico? Still, till two seconds ago, he was absolutely sure that the bond was leading here...only now it seems like it´s coming from Asia, which is much more realistic anyway. Why did he ever think Mexico?
Wait, no, Europe. It´s leading to Europe. Somewhere to the North, Norway maybe. Or Finland? He crashes randomly somewhere near Helsinki to orientate more precisely, but now it feels like Gabriel is somewhere in the western USA and Michael just can´t believe how he can be so bad at tracking, when it is vitally important.
Gabriel´s screams are still there, mixed with sobs and fragments of sentences, that make Michael feel like he just swallowed a whole volcano, about to erupt. He never hears Kali´s answers, but she seems to be trying to force Gabriel to do something, something he obviously doesn´t want to do at all.
The volcano is rumbling, close to explode into overwhelming pain, fear and fury. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he feels Raphael tugging and the angel bond bursting into activity, but he can´t deal with them right now, it is his job to find Gabriel and save him, because he is the oldest and supposed to keep everyone safe and also it is his fault that Gabriel ran at the warehouse.
"Please", he whispers over the bond. "Gabriel, please hold on, I´m coming, I´m sorry, please be alright, I just found you, I just found out you were alive, you can´t… Gabriel, please, come on!"
No answer. Maybe Gabriel really can´t control it and is just randomly shouting out to the world.
But then at least the signal should be a bit more precise, because Michael has visited every continent more than once in the last minute and seriously, he can´t be that bad at tracking. Something is wrong with the signal, something…
Michael violently forces himself to stop and think, even though everything inside him is screaming at him to go on, because Gabriel needs to be found NOW.
Alright, alright, list.
When in doubt, make a list.
So, what does he really know?
First, Gabriel is screaming through the bond, which is suddenly strong enough to make out sentences, even thought since Lucifer´s rebellion there have only been unspecific tugs.
Second, according to what he hears, Kali is trying to force Gabriel to do something and is probably torturing him.
Third, the bond seems to be impossible to trace, not only for him, but apparently also for the other angels, as he has just found out by actually listening to them for a second.
Wait, that means the other angels can also hear Gabriel. It´s not just the archangel bond then. Is that fourth?
He is confusing himself now, somewhere Lucifer starts singing and Michael can feel that he is close to going into a full blown panic attack. The meadow, the peace it brought and the feeling that everything can be fixed, seem incredible far away, like a half forgotten dream.
Nothing can be fixed. He can´t make Gabriel proud, he can´t even protect him, can´t even find him and earth is just so freaking big, he hasn´t got a chance if he can´t trace the bond, he HAS to trace the bond, he has to, and someone is playing with him, he is sure of it now, the bond is manipulated, probably by Kali, and he definitely is going to kill here, he is going to kill her slowly and…
"No!", Gabriel shouts. "Forget it, I´m not killing Michael! Michael, don´t come, do you hear me? Michael, if you hear this, just leave me!"
Michael thought Lucifer taught him what heartbreak meant.
He had no idea.
Is there anything worse than hearing your sweet, little brother, who you just found out is alive, suffer to protect you, without being able to find him and safe him?
Your sweet, little brother, who if you hadn´t acted like an utter jerk for basically forever, would now be safe in heaven.
"Michael!", Gabriel is shouting and Michael isn´t sure if he is shouting for him to come, or to go away, it doesn´t matter anyway, because there is no way that he will just leave his brother being tortured.
"I´m getting you out of there, Gabriel", he shouts back. "I promise I will, just hold on!"
The next stab of pain is so intense, his mind goes completely blank for a few seconds.
When he can finally think again, the bond is quiet, but still there and Michael follows it, the volcano inside him vanished, leaving only ashes. He isn´t sure why, but he just knows that the will be no more misdirections and he is right about that.
It´s an alleyway, like they can be found everywhere on earth, dark even in daylight, framed by large buildings and trashcans on the sides. It´s not even an especially filthy one, just dark and narrow, but Michael only remotely takes it in anyway, because Gabriel is lying smack in the middle of it, curled together on his side as if in a last effort to protect himself, face hidden in his arms, blue light flowing out of a wound in his stomach.
Michael is unable to move, just starring at his little brother and getting the eerie feeling of having run in a circle all along.
He sees a meadow, Gabriel curled up in almost the same pose, black wings burned into the grass.
And he knows he can´t survive this another time.
Losing someone is horrible, but losing someone, then getting him briefly back, just to fail him and lose him again...there aren´t even words for that feeling.
But there are no wing marks yet and Gabriel is slowly lifting his head and looking up to Michael in a last desperate effort, with nothing but pure fear and pain in his eyes, the look burning into Michael forever.
The moment he reaches Gabriel, is the moment his little brother´s eyes explode into light.
Light.
Black wingmarks burned into the ground.
Gabriel´s twisted body, lying limp in the alley.
Other angels arriving, shock waves over the bonds.
And Michael just sits there, pressing his little brother´s body to his chest, unable to even cry and all he can think is that he just promised to safe Gabriel and that he failed that promise almost as quick as he made it in the worst possible way.
…
Balthazar is one of the first ones to arrive, absolutely unable to believe what just happened. He wants to push through the quickly forming crowd of shocked and confused angels, wants to reach Gabriel, shake him, slap him, tell him that this isn´t fair, that he can´t just turn up after years and years and then get himself killed the next day, but there is just enough survival instinct left in him to realize, that trying to get Gabriel away from Michael now, would be suicide.
It is a whole other kind of shock to see the archangels like that. To Balthazar and the other angels they always were that higher authority, that you would whisper things about behind their backs, but never openly question. There is a kind of awareness, that once the relationships were different and he always remembers loving Gabriel as an older brother, but in the past centuries Michael and Raphael didn´t even seem like the same species anymore, too absolute, cold and remote.
Now Michael seems too far gone into shock to ever come back from it, while Raphael is standing a few feet away from his brothers, slowly shaking his head, agony on his face, as if trying to remember something important, like what is going on for example.
Balthazar can´t even look at Gabriel. It´s just too much.
It´s barely possible to even move in the alley anymore and in a dreamlike state he wonders what they would look like to a human chancing on them. An ally filled with completely different people, that seem to have no relation to each other, starring and gasping at a man holding a corpse. Doesn´t look rude at all.
Okay, the starring and gasping is probably rude and there really shouldn´t be that many angels in a spot that doesn´t belong to heaven, but then, this is only the second time ever an archangel died (and it doesn´t help that it was two times the same), no one is giving orders anymore and Balthazar surely won´t be the first one to go. The shock is beginning to wear of, being replaced by bottomless grief. Maybe it was stupid to believe that everything would be better now, just because he saw Gabriel for five minutes. Because of a quick glance and a wink. Alright, it WAS stupid, but he wanted to believe. He needed to believe.
Someone is pushing into him from behind and Balthazar stumbles, quickly regaining his footing and pushing back, ready to defend his spot.
The answer is an angel blade to his throat.
Well, that escalated quickly.
"Don´t you dare give any kind of alarm", a familiar female voice whispers into his ear and he freezes instantly, fear, grief and utter hatred flashing through him in quick succession. "You come with me now and there is no need for anyone to get hurt"
"Why should I believe you?", Balthazar grinds through his teeth, fighting against the temptation to just turn around and strangle her, no matter what the angel blade would do to him on the way. "You killed him!"
"That´s not exactly how it was", Kali answers, infuriatingly calm. "But you wouldn´t believe me anyway, so be a good boy and just come with me"
"You killed...him", Balthazar finds that he is unable to say the name "and now you are trying to kidnap me from the middle of a group of angels? That is about the most stupid plan ever"
"Believe me, it´s not", Kali says and Father, she sounds like she is actually enjoying this and he never in his existence wanted to kill someone so badly. "You notice that there is no one even looking at us? This is a deep pool of emotions in this place, a bit of hatred, fear and anger won´t make a difference over the bonds. And no one will recognize me. There are so many different vessels and so much power around, that it is impossible to keep track of and no one focuses on it anyway"
"I can still scream that you have got me", he manages, panicking slightly. "They will rip you to pieces"
"Oh, I don´t doubt they would", she answers casually and suddenly he feels something wet and sticky dripping over him and that bitch didn´t just… "Holy oil, all over you. And I can do this" One of her arms reaches around him and still holding the angel blade to his throat with the other hand, she lets a little flame dance in her palm, right in front of his face. "Angels everywhere in a narrow alley, too lost in themselves to really see what´s going on. What do you think would happen, if I set you aflame. That would be quite a show, wouldn´t it?"
He has never felt that helpless before. "Bitch!", he curses, tears forming in his eyes.
"Good boy", she replies, pushing him through the crowd and he lets her do it, dead inside, hair sticky with holy oil and the whole situation is just too surreal. There are angels all around and he is being kidnapped by the...being, that killed Gabriel and he doesn´t know who he hates more, her or himself for letting her.
She pushes him out of the alley, then up some metal stairs, that seem to ironically be a fire escape, then onto a flat roof, with a great view on the turmoil in the alley below and he stares down at Michael and Raphael, who seem to not have moved at all and he wonders if she wants to torture him some more, before she executes him, or what in the world…
"Oh shit, I´m so sorry, kiddo! Are you alright?"
He snaps around, completely forgetting the angel blade and the fire threat (not seeing how Kali hastily drops the blade) and stares at the figure on the brink of the roof.
Then at whatever Michael is holding down in the alley.
Then back at the figure on the roof.
Then his mind shuts down and next he knows he is kneeling on the roof and sobbing into Gabriel´s shirt, because he is there, somehow Gabriel is there and hugging him and offering him chocolate and apologizing over and over again and Kali is on the side grinning at them and he doesn´t know what to think any more and it is just too much.
"What..?", he tries, but has no idea what he wants to ask. "What…?"
"What the hell?", Gabriel offers.
"Yeah, WHAT THE HELL DID YOU JUST DO?", Balthazar screams at him, suddenly angry, because he believed Gabriel dead and all the others still do and he was just up there on the roof, watching them go insane and he can´t even begin to progress what Kali´s role could have been in all of this.
Gabriel suddenly looks like a child caught stealing sweets. "I...uhm... played a bit with bonds and illusions to destabilize heaven… and Kali helped me… being a goddess of death and destruction and all… and I think it kind of escalated…and I just got you out… also, I should probably tell you that that´s olive oil and you really should have seen your face, that was brilliant"
"Brilliant…", Balthazar echoes numbly, sniffing at the oil drops on his arms, which really seem to be olive oil, to overwhelmed to even be relieved, that he never was an atomic bomb on the whim of a goddess of destruction. "Brilliant? Seriously?"
"Okay, maybe not", Gabriel agrees, shoulders dropping and in some ways he looks just as done as Michael and Raphael in the alley. "I scared the shit out of you. Sorry for that, but I couldn´t talk to you without giving up my shields here and you needed to come with her"
Balthazar just nods absently, looking down at the other angels and feeling their grief, feeling the big nothingness in Michael and Raphael, as they gather around what Balthazar now knows to be an illusion, but still he can´t look at without feeling sick.
"Okay, right, I think heaven is destabilized, but…", he slowly shakes his head. "I don´t know, I just can´t believe you did this"
"Yeah?", Gabriel asks, letting himself down on the edge of the roof, letting his legs dangle like a little child on a high chair, so precariously close to falling, that Balthazar immediately steps behind him, not ready to take any more chances, watching Gabriel closely as he mournfully stares at Michael and Raphael, looking like he is contemplating to just screw everything and pop up next to Michael, screw the consequences.
"Me neither"