sirenspull_logs | I pray we'll find your light

Entry tags:

I pray we'll find your light

Who: Raphael

uberboned
When: September 4th 1918
Where: Some where on ~~Siren's Port~~ Missionworth
Summary: God is dead and the boys are left behind.
Warnings: Death

Raphael felt it. He'd only felt that echoing emptiness, that hollowness in his Grace once before. When God had abandoned His Throne, for places unknown. He can't quite stop the panic that rattles through him, and he barely spares a thought for those out in the Darkness. He has only one thought.

Father! He screams it out, not a prayer but a child's frightened, desperate cry. He doesn't stop to think that experience tells him he won't be answered, simply unfurls his wings and flies, looking frantically for Chuck. What he finds is a body, an empty shell. It's even more frightening.

It takes only a thought before he finds Gabriel, grabbing him tight and pulling him by the shoulder. What does can he say?

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Gabriel could hear Kali's words echoing in his head. They can die. But that was about angels and angels are surprisingly fragile for being difficult to kill. You just need the right weapons.

And it wasn't as if they didn't know this would happen one day.

Death wasn't here. Death didn't call Him home. That was how it worked.

The fresh Darkness recoils from a torturous internal angelic scream at the feeling of the Presence dissipating and when Raphael arrives, there's little but rot and decay and a safe circle devoid of monsters. For the moment, they can stay here and grieve without fear of fighting.

"I know," he chokes as soon as Raphael's in front of him. He grips his brother's arms and ducks his head, suddenly caring little for pretext and bravado and only wanting to be a younger brother. "That son of a bitch," he growls.

Gabriel's grip is steadying. He needs it. Raphael's ready to lash out, destroy everything, visit a violent and vicious maelstrom on the island to vent his anger and grief. But he cannot, he can't be the one who's lost to grief. Instead he pulls Gabriel closer, tucking the younger angel, the smaller vessel, against himself, wings flaring brightly for a moment as he wraps them around Gabriel protectively.

"Not nearly strong enough words." It's rumbled, because he can't, can't really wrap his brain around what just occurred. God was supposed to outlive them all, save Death, and this wasn't supposed to happen. Not like this. It's a worse shock than an abandoned Heaven.

Raphael's not that tall with a human vessel, much like himself, but Gabriel knows he's a giant and that's why he feels pathetically small when his face buried in his brother's chest, gritting his teeth through agonized sobs. It was one thing to reject God, tell Him to get lost and let them sort out everything for themselves, it was another for the bastard to just go and get Himself killed.

"That wasn't supposed to happen," he hissed. "He wasn't supposed to... I didn't want that."

He wasn't sure what he wanted, in the end, but that wasn't it.

Gabriel isn't the only child Raphael has held as he reels from a parent's death. But he's the first in longer than most can count, he's the first angel, and he's Raphael's brother. And he's never felt that pain himself. Raphael isn't sure if he's breathing as ragged, or if Gabriel's eyes are tearing with his.

He'd been angry. Hostile. Ignoring God's presence more than he acknowledged it, but he'd never wanted God to be dead. Quite the opposite. He wanted his Father, he just didn't know where.

"I don't know what happened. I-Gabriel. He. He's-" He can't say dead. Instead he just holds tighter to Gabriel. They'll all alone. But they are alone together.

He almost says that He'll come back. People come back all the time. Castiel did, Crowley did, Ahiru did. Lots of people. But for every one that did, there's more that didn't. Anna, Jack, Sirius, Edgeworth, Rochelle... He's been here for years and seen people come and go and go and come. God would be no different.

And that terrifies him.

He pulls back, wrapping his arms around himself like a sulking child, and tries to get his composure back. "And the worst part is... It doesn't change anything," he snaps. "He's gone like He's always been gone, except now we know for sure."

It changes nothing, but it also changes everything, and Gabriel doesn't know how to deal with that.

Raphael's faced that. Faced it when Michael came back, remembering but cold, compared to what he had been when Raphael arrived. Colder, harder, than he was in Heaven.

He knows nothing has changed back home, doesn't believe anything will, it's why he had been avoiding Chuck, other than peeking at him to make sure he was still there. He doesn't let Gabriel pull away, keeping a hand on his shoulder. "So we know. I've known for a long time he wasn't come back Gabriel." Something he hadn't even told Michael.

Raphael's not really dealing with it either. Completely the opposite. But there's no reason to share that distress with his younger brother.

Gabriel scoffs and looks away, unable to deal with that much either. The harsh reality they all knew, but were all too afraid to admit. God was either dead or gone and nothing they did would ever get Him back.

It was a horrific, lonely feeling and while it should have been satisfying, Gabriel just felt emptier than before.

"So why do I feel like crap?"

Raphael understood all too well how Gabriel was feeling, he was struggling with not lashing over the sheer anger of it. Anger was so much easier to feel, to control.

"Because archangels don't know how to exist without God." They could figure out how to not serve Him - angels Fell, even archangels. Lucifer had paved the way for that. But to exist without him - none of them really understood how to.

Gabriel tried to scoff at that too, but only managed to grimace. It made sense, in a way, even if he filled the hole (quite well too) with every distraction imaginable, it always made him feel better to know God was out there somewhere, but didn't give a fuck. That was easier. Him being dead was a harder gap to fill, because where there was something that didn't matter anymore before, now there was just an empty place. A firm knowledge that Dad wouldn't be coming home and they wouldn't be able to yell at him for what He did.

"So I guess that's it," he finally said. "Nothing left. The end."

What more was there to say. They'd get out of this, resume their lives, but this would always haunt them and saying it was done didn't make Gabriel feel better at all. He hoped it would, that he could just yell his problems into submission and that would be all.

Raphael had never known what to do with that void. One some level, his loyalty and sense of duty had been transfered to Michael over time, and now it was something he could ease off of. But even still, that void remained, draining on him over the years.

"Yes. Maybe not here. And maybe he's still around back home but. We can't count on it."

Raphael was slowly getting angry. He didn't quite understand what he was angry over, but it was there, for all he kept pushing it down.

"Like we ever could count on much of anything." Gabriel's no less angry, even if he's not showing it as much. His anger shows in his bitterness and resentment. In the set of his shoulders and the way he hunches over like if he made his wings visible right now they'd cover him in a protective cocoon and he could hide behind them.

"That's our thing- we get eternally screwed over." So was it any wonder that they screwed over everyone else? The Winchesters could hate them for their collective attitude problems, but they weren't the only ones who got screwed over. And Gabriel had a life now, something he could fall back on in this trying of times.

Raphael had nothing. He looks up at his brother, suddenly seeing him in a new light. "It's gotta be worse for you."

"I could count on Michael." It's slipped out, hard and accusing, and he doesn't mean it, not at Gabriel, not right now. In contrast to Gabriel's posture, his shoulders are rigid and drawn back.

He doesn't protest then getting screwed over. They were. Gabriel had died, yes, and Lucifer probably deserved the Cage, but him? Michael? Michael hadn't deserved it. And he didn't deserve being alone.

If Gabriel had voiced his realization, Raphael would likely have thrown a punch, or worse. He took a breath, clenched his jaw so tightly it hurt. "Why? Because I've felt or watched all of you die, or worse?"

"That," Gabriel shrugged. "And worse."

He's been alone of his own volition, watched Heaven torn apart from an outsider's view, but no less pained by all of it. Being in the middle was worse. Not having anything to fall back on and hide in was worse, still.

"It's never been easy," he went on, deciding that some things are better left unspoken, especially when they're regarding the fact that Raphael had probably suffered most out of all of them. "That's just how it is."

"I'm tired of it being how it is." Raphael almost shrank up on himself, shoulders folding forward and head curling down. He'll, rarely, tease Gabriel about being the elder of the pair, but really - it's not like comparing it to them and Michael. And while he feels like he should be the older one, the stronger one, the one taking care of Gabriel right now, he also just wants to tuck them both away and stop with this. Even if he knows he can't. Where Gabriel's wings visible and covering the younger angel, Raphael would likely simply crawl inside with him.

It's probably the first time he's actually felt a desire to run away from everyone else.

"You aren't allowed to die or disappear Gabriel." He's not actually even attempting to make it sound like anything other than what it was - a plea. Don't leave me alone.

Gabriel never considered that an option- leaving. The Core would have to drag him kicking and screaming from this place, but he knows that no one ever leaves willingly. It swept you up just when you started to get comfortable and sometimes you never came back. He'd held onto hope that because there was nothing for him back home that he'd always remain here.

But that wasn't a sure thing and he could no sooner promise that he could never leave any more than he could promise the world will open up to them and they could get out of this hellish town and lead real lives elsewhere in this world.

So all he said, in a tone sardonic enough to make someone who didn't know him doubt how seriously he was taking this, was, "Why would I be that stupid? Jinx would kill me."

Raphael doesn't want to stay. He wants to go home, save Michael, try to stop what he's found out is coming. Try to keep from losing what he's discovering he likes - having brothers again, not just soldiers. He'd drag Gabriel back with him in a heartbeat, even if it meant hauling a dozen people with him. He knows he doesn't have that choice, any more than any of them do.

He's never felt helpless before, not truly. Not until this place and he hates the very island's existence for that fact alone, even if it's not this place's fault.

He knew that tone, had heard it before. "Well. You have pulled some incredibly stupid stunts in the past." He's not lecturing or scolding but he doubts anyone but Gabriel would have ever heard that tone to know it. Peacocking in the highest order, being calm, serious, and in control to cover how little of any of it he actually was.

Times past, he'd expect Gabriel to follow it with another joke. He doesn't know what to expect now.

"I've grown up." Not a stupid comment or a joke. Just honest fact. Maybe some things would always be the same, but Gabriel had, in fact, changed. He was more concerned with what's right. He chose humanity and while he still loved his family more than anything, he had no interest in having a place at the Table anymore. If they went home, he wouldn't be going with them and he wouldn't be taking Jinx into a world where she'd be unable to live any sort of life with the way she looked.

So their best option if they were going to stay together was to stay here or else leave separately. This was not a situation that had a happy ending no matter how it played out.

"Well. Stop that." He meant it a little more than he thought he would - Gabriel being someone he could lean on was eerie - not unwelcome, but eerie.

Raphael knew, deep down, the archangels would never be together as they once had been. Somewhere, he'd stopped hopping to be the Four Who Stood Before the Throne again, to hopping to be the Three Princes of Heaven together. Then Lucifer had killed Gabriel and all he had left was Michael. Who was gone now too.

The only "happy" ending he'd seen for any of them was The End and now, he didn't even have that.

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I pray we'll find your light

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