According to the Christian worldview, time is linear. It passes on and on, step by step, from creation to judgement day, without ever rewinding itself, marking a world that knows where it comes from and where it is going.
According to the Hindu worldview, time is circular. It goes round and round in cycles, every time passing through four epochs called Yugas, then starting again. The first is called Satya Yuga, the golden age. The last is Kali Yuga, the age of darkness.
Michael wonders if it is blasphemy to think that the Hindu one sounds about right.
He certainly has no idea where he is going and time seems to have rewound itself in the most painful way possible. Gabriel seems to weight nothing at all in his arms, but to Michael he couldn´t be heavier. The whole world couldn´t be heavier.
Last time – and the whole notion that there was a last time makes him shudder – it was Raphael, who finally took Gabriel from him, ignoring his shouts, pleas and threats and lead him away into some quiet corner of the garden, where he could break down without direct witnesses.
Raphael certainly won´t do anything like that this time and no one else seems to dare. Michael has some notion in the back of his mind, that he should probably get up, if only to get Gabriel back to heaven – at least get him back to heaven in some way –, but he can´t seem to muster the strength. It´s like all his energy has gone with Gabriel.
Oh, Father, please do something, I won´t ever ask for anything again, just bring back Gabriel, please, I will do everything, everything at all, I need you, Gabriel needs you, Father, Father, please!
No answer.
Michael doesn´t cry. There is just nothing left inside him to cry.
He finally gets up, still clinging to Gabriel, because he has to.
No, some voice inside him, that isn´t even Lucifer – he feels like hearing Lucifer would be a relief right now, just to hear that he hasn´t killed all his brothers- tells him. That isn´t Gabriel, that is just his vessel, an empty shell. Gabriel is gone and no one knows what happens to angels after they are gone. You can let go of the body, that isn´t him.
And suddenly Michael gets overwhelmed by how unfair it is that angels live all their live knowing what happens to humans when they die, surrounded by the dead ones and their little afterlives, yet have no idea about their own destiny.
That´s just one more hole inside him and the holes have become so many, it´s impossible to distinguish between them anymore anyway.
He can´t bring the body back to heaven, because the voice is right and it isn´t Gabriel, but he can´t let go of it either, because the voice is absolutely wrong at the same time and it IS Gabriel.
He finally decides on going to the meadow in Switzerland, the place where he first heard the screams and that is now forever tainted for him, but he thinks Gabriel would have liked it and it is still the most heavenly place that he has ever found on earth.
The other angels follow him, but he doesn´t care. He doesn´t see them anyway, only Gabriel, Gabriel as a fledgling, laughing and shouting, Gabriel begging him to go to earth with him, Gabriel cuddled into his arms and telling stories about the forms of the clouds, stories that Michael couldn´t come up with in a million years, Gabriel falling surprisingly still after these stories, peace all over his features as he leans against Michael´s chest, because apparently there was a time when Michael´s arms were the safest place in the world to him, Gabriel pale and still forever.
Michael carefully lays Gabriel down in the meadow, not caring if it is just a vessel or not. Damn it all, he needs something, humans at least get something to bury, why don´t angels ever get anything that humans see as given?
But all in all, he is pretty sure that he couldn´t stand through a funeral of any kind anyway, so he softly kisses Gabriel´s forehead, stroking through his little brother´s hair one last time, then turns around to the others and croaks out: "Take care of him, alright?"
They seem shocked that he speaks to them at all and more shocked that he doesn´t even shout or give orders, but they will come up with something. They need a way of goodbye to and Michael just isn´t able to do anything more final than the meadow.
With one last look at his little brother, who looks like he did as a fledgling, lying in the grass of the garden, just about to jump up again, because Gabriel never lay still for so long without anyone holding him, he flees back to heaven.
He has pushed away the fact that Gabriel has been brutally murdered for a surprisingly long time and back in heaven he can´t get past that thought and all it implies. He is shaking with rage only thinking of Kali and her betrayal, Gabriel´s screams echoing in his mind over and over again and he will make sure that she suffers for every second of it five times as long, but no matter how much he hates Kali, he can´t hate her as much as he hates himself right now.
All the tugs he felt over the years and never thought anything about.
That time Balthazar wanted to see him, wide eyed and bouncing, telling him that Gabriel was alive and he sent him away and to reeducation with the next possible excuse.
The way Gabriel looked at him, when he learned about Raphael.
Him being unable to find Gabriel over the bond, even though his little brother was screaming and suffering, and all Michael did was giving promises, that he was unable to hold.
Gabriel protecting him, despite everything, even thought Michael is the older one and doesn´t deserve this kind of sacrifice anyway.
Bright light and black wingmarks.
Michael looks around, haunted by his ghosts and suddenly he can´t take heaven any more.
The clinical white walls, the straight corridors, one door next to another, little heavens ordered by the names of their inhabitants.
All in order, all predictable, everything clean and perfect.
Gabriel would have hated it here.
Lucifer too and Raphael, if Michael had let him be himself like he should have.
And somewhere in the very back of Michael´s head, there is a very little angel, the first one in existence, playing on his own without being lonely, who would have hated it too.
It feels suddenly like he is seeing heaven for the very first time, with no shields or sugarcoating, really seeing it, like Gabriel would have probably seen it.
All these little words the humans essentially create for themselves, all cut off from each other, separated from the angels, labeled and put in line, the only parts of heaven that really belong to the angels being the clinical corridors, the offices, Naomi´s reeducation rooms and the prison.
And Michael stands there midst all of it hating heaven and hating earth, hating Kali most of all, but also hating Lucifer for making things difficult, Raphael for not being himself, Gabriel for running and himself for screwing it all up.
And hating Father, because he has finally been pushed to far to care about blasphemy. What kind of father just lets his children suffer like this?
He feels so lost, like a little child gone missing, who just wants to find his parents and go home.
Well, the parent thing he can probably forget by now and should have forgotten a long time ago and despite what it feels like he is home, so there goes that.
Expect he isn´t.
He hasn´t been home for a very long time, telling himself that it is to better forget his home, shutting it off and denying it to himself and everybody else, making it a place existing only in memory, because seeing it would be too painful.
Well, screw everything. Nothing can be more painful than what he is going through right now. He needs his home, so desperately, he will start to bawl like a little child, if he doesn´t get it. He needs Gabriel, he needs Raphael, yes, even Lucifer and also the little angel, who still remembered how to be a good big brother and if there is a place where they still live, it´s at home.
So Michael is running, running for the last save place in the world, that was waiting for him all the time, but that he always denied to himself.
When Michael ordered the garden to be shut off, he thought he would never enter it again. But still there remained dreams, quick fragments in the few quiet moment he stole for himself, that showed them all happy in the garden again, depending on how much self control Michael had at the given moment including Lucifer or not. So he ordered Joshua to take care of the garden and kept it in the middle of heaven, just in case. Just in case.
A case like the last days, when he dreamed of leading Gabriel back into the garden, of Gabriel looking around with joy in his eyes and saying: "It´s exactly as I remember it" and of himself laughing and saying: "That´s the point"
Never ever would he have thought that when he finally entered the garden again, it would be alone, broken and grieving, finally having no other directions left to flee than forwards and backwards and suspecting that they might be the same thing.
He closes his eyes when he lands, opening them slowly and taking the garden in like a dream that seems too good to be true and that you are therefore very careful with, to not be taken by surprise, should it suddenly turn into a nightmare.
Joshua sure is good at his job.
The garden is so fresh and beautiful and familiar, that Michael´s knees give in and he just sits in the grass starring around, unable to believe where he is and that he all the time he could have just done this.
He can see them, running through the grass, Lucifer, Raphael and Gabriel, his little brothers, his responsibilities, playing and shouting at each other in little arguments that meant nothing and were forgiven and forgotten moments later.
He can also see what he feared to see, Lucifer falling screaming, Raphael with empty eyes, Gabriel pale and limp, but if that is the prize for seeing them young and happy, maybe he is willing to pay after all.
It´s like taking a walk through the past. He passes the tree, where they spent the nights with the fledglings, the waterfall, where Lucifer would always soak everyone else, until Gabriel grew big enough to get back at him, some of Lucifer´s and Gabriel´s favorite hiding places, the open sunny spots Raphael preferred. He walks and walks like through a dream or a museum or both and Joshua has really kept everything as it was and he wants to cry so hard his chest hurts, but the garden is no place to cry and he feels like he has to hold it back, because letting it out would be some kind of crime, desecration maybe.
And then he recognizes a certain clearing and suddenly has the strange and unreal feeling of having completed something, of having made a full circle and sure the circle was full of shit and he made everyone he ever loved suffer on the way, but at least he made the circle and now it is finally over and he can lay down and close his eyes, duty done forever.
Seems like Joshua hasn´t left everything as it was, because the wingmarks have vanished, but Michael would always recognize this clearing and suddenly he isn´t sure how he feels about this place, because obviously Gabriel didn´t die here after all, like he thought for so long.
Not for the first time Michael asks himself what would have happened if he had just stayed here, loosing himself and leaving heaven to Raphael.
And then, because maybe time is a circle after all, he lies down, where it all started, where he lost himself after Gabriel´s apparent death and Raphael came to get him, unknowingly signing his own and heavens doom.
Michael has gone in a circle for millenniums and maybe he should feel frustrated about that, but if he has learned anything it´s that leaving and coming back to the same place is never the same as never leaving.
"I could use a Satya Yuga now", he tells no one in particular committing maybe his greatest blasphemy ever, but no one answers. Well, it´s not like his own father answers him, so he can´t really expect anyone else to, especially a mythology he is definitely going to kill a main goddess of.
He closes his eyes, shutting out the world for just a few moments, trying to gather a few good memories of his brothers and getting lost in them, hoping to never find his way back.
When he opens his eyes again, Raphael is standing over him and Michael almost laughs out loud despite himself and despite everything. Sometimes the only things you can do are laugh or cry and this is one of this moments, when the world is just too absurd, while at the same time making sense in a twisted way.
"Didn´t expect you here for some time", he tells Raphael, his voice sounding strange and foreign to himself. "Aren´t you supposed to leave me alone for a few days? Try to rule heaven or something like that?"
Raphael just stares at him, clearly not getting the reference to their own lives and Michael doesn´t know why he expected him to. He destroyed Raphael and he couldn´t even admit it for an eternity. Can´t even really admit it now. So he just remains where he is, looking up at his little brother and wondering if he should get up and take control in some way, at least ask Raphael what he is doing here and if he even knows what this place is, but he feels like he is frozen to the ground and just doesn´t have the strength to free himself.
It´s a strange moment and later he couldn´t have said how long it lasted, it´s one of those moments, that seem to take place outside of time. The bond between them is mostly swallowed by the enormous grief and guilt radiating from Michael, but there is also grief from Raphael, unfocussed like he isn´t exactly sure what he is grieving just that it hurts, and underneath it a mixture of confusion, anger, fear and … determination? No, that can´t be, Michael scolds himself. He hasn´t felt more than dutiful determination from Raphael in millenniums and what he seems to feel now is something entirely else. Something wild, something desperate, like Raphael is about to explode from the inside.
Maybe it is just the garden and the memories that are messing with Michael´s mind, but here and now, after learning that his oldest brother brainwashed him for defending another brother and finding his youngest, barely remembered brother again, just to loose him a day later, Raphael seems more alive, more like the person he once was, than he has seemed since that day after Michael and Naomi went for Abner and Gadreel. It´s like he has been broken long ago and the recent happenings have burned him, accidentally melting some of the bits back together, twisted and blackened, but finally in one piece again.
And Michael is suddenly very aware of everything he ever did to Raphael and that he himself is helplessly lying on the ground right now, with Raphael standing over him, in a twisted parody of all the times Michael didn´t allow Raphael take a seat, while taking one himself, in an act of stupid, unnecessary power play, that still went on and on forever, undermining Raphael´s self esteem on a daily basis.
I´m sorry, Michael wants to say, but because he has always been a jerk, hurting his brothers and because some stupid part of him still believes in power play what comes out is: "Isn´t that the part where you tell me that you need my help?"
Raphael just stares at him, so deadpan it is getting scary and then, surprising Michael and himself equally, he suddenly bursts out: "I don´t. You need my help"
For one moment none of them knows how to react, so they just don´t.
Then the bond goes mad, Michael being overwhelmed by anger, because how does Raphael DARE, he is just a mindless soldier, nothing more, and fear and shock from Raphael´s side, who is clearly cursing himself, fearing what Michael will do to him now, about to fall to his knees and apologize, but then the strange broken determination in Raphael returns and he just stands there, dying with fear inside, but not apologizing and that totally throws Michael off the last rails he still relied on.
He just stares at Raphael and somewhere behind the mindless soldier there seems to be his little brother and then Raphael takes a deep breath, offering his hand to Michael in the stupidest, most self-defying and by far the bravest peace offering, that Michael has ever seen.
Only it´s even more than a peace offering. Michael has tortured Raphael, taken his memories, absolutely destroyed him from the inside and here Raphael stands, defying fear that has been burned and carved into him, not only offering peace, but help, revenge for Gabriel in some way, just because he saw Michael suffering so much with Gabriel gone.
The only part of Michael´s brain that is still functioning somewhat rationally remarks that Raphael always has been strongest in a crisis, calming Michael down when everything became too much and Lucifer and Gabriel when they threw their tantrums, trying to shield Gabriel from the happenings around Lucifer´s rebellion and not to forget, freaking running heaven on his own, right after having literally lost everything. Raphael is the one who, when everyone is down and waiting for someone else to save the day, get up after a time and just does it, because clearly no one else will, and apparently nothing in the world can beat this trait out of him.
Every other part of Michael´s brain is just screaming that there is no way in all of creation, that he deserves Raphael. If there could ever be a moment of him feeling more undeserving of his brothers, he really can´t imagine it right now.
Raphael´s desperate determination is starting to crumble quickly, not being able to take the tension, pure fear taking over again and processing into the direction of full blown panic. He slowly pulls back his hand, unsure how to retreat best.
And then Michael starts to cry.
It´s childish, really, but the moment Raphael gives up on him, every wall inside him just bursts under the pressure, every shield just collapses and he is sitting on the ground in the garden, bawling his eyes out in front of Raphael, who is absolutely frozen in shock and has no idea how to deal with the situation. Escalating in this way.
All his instincts are screaming to leave Michael alone and run, but there is one little voice saying that it´s just not right to leave Michael alone like this and that he should do something, anything, and while Raphael is still oblivious that he was a healer once, on some level, on the level of this voice, he still is.
Michael is completely lost in his agony, for once not caring that Raphael sees him, that he is the oldest and can´t have break downs, because he just fully realized that Gabriel is dead and Raphael is all he has left.
Dead.
It´s the first time he has allowed himself to even think that.
Dead, not gone, or some other sugarcoated expression, that makes it sound like Gabriel is just around the corner and could come back any time.
Gabriel is dead, for real this time and Michael doesn´t think he will ever be able to cope with that.
"Gabriel is dead", he sobs out, to get it over with, to make it real, because it had to become real sooner or later and Raphael who still has absolutely no idea how to react, apart from not running away, tenses and tries to say something that doesn´t sound stupid, but all that comes out is: "I know", which really isn´t very comforting, but somehow it is for Michael, because he is just glad that someone answers, that someone is still there, that Raphael talks even though he isn´t asked to and that makes him sob even harder, which in turn confuses Raphael even more and the situation is getting really awkward, till Michael tells Raphael through his tears to freaking sit down and then they just sit in the grass, two meters apart, Michael sobbing relentlessly, while Raphael stares at his feet and it´s the most comfortable uncomfortable situation of all time.
"I´m sorry", Michael finally tries to apologize. "Sorry for everything, sorry for breaking down, sorry for..."
"Stop it", Raphael interrupts him and Michael is feeling extremely irritated and strangely happy at the same time, because his brother just interrupted him, which is what he has been trying to provoke for years, but now that Raphael does it, he of course doesn´t like being interrupted and it´s all so confused, but really, what isn´t at this point?
"Michael", Raphael begins and Michael can feel that he still fears to be punished for all of this. "I...I still don´t really know what´s going on and what you did to me and I don´t think I can ever forgive you. But I think if you fall apart, heaven falls apart and besides...I feel like I have to do something for Gabriel. I mean, I don´t remember much about him, but everything I do remember...I´m talking like an idiot, am I not?"
"Not more than me usually", Michael replies and then he hugs Raphael out of an impulse and he feels his brother shrinking back, trying to escape, but he doesn´t let go and Raphael calms a bit after a time, more underlying fear than panic welling through the bond now.
Alright, Michael thinks. I threw one of my brothers into the pit, got another one killed and the third one is so afraid of me he tenses when I touch him and he will probably never forgive me, which he shouldn´t considering what I did, but at least we have some kind of peace and both want revenge for Gabriel. Oh, and Lilith is still running around and my vessel is going to hell, which means we can start the apocalypse. Get along, kill Kali, start the apocalypse. Well, that is a plan, at least.
Then he lets Raphael free, feeling incredibly guilty again, when he sees his brothers face, because while Michael really needed this hug, for Raphael it was apparently close to assault, even though he is trying to hide his strong reaction.
"Sorry", Michael murmurs. "I won´t do it again, if you don´t want to" Raphael just nods, not really believing it, but having lost all his strength to argue. "Alright", he says, seeming much more like before he came to the garden, which makes Michael want to slap himself. "Can I go now?"
"Wait a moment, just a moment", Michael croaks out. "Can you remember the garden?"
Alright, maybe memory is not the best topic to begin gaining Raphael´s trust, but his little brother actually takes the bait, looking around and answering almost shyly: "Not much, just a bit. I like it though. It´s beautiful"
"Yes", Michael sighs, feeling that Raphael is beginning to relax a little and hoping that maybe, just maybe they can stay like that for a bit, talking about good things and finding a little peace in the garden, that has never stopped being their home. "It definitely is"
And for once, just this once, they are lucky and the moment lasts.