I pray we'll find your light

[servingmichael]

Who: Raphael servingmichael and Gabriel 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?

Comments

[uberboned]

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.

[servingmichael]

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.

[uberboned]

"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."

[servingmichael]

"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?"

[uberboned]

"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."

[servingmichael]

"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.

[uberboned]

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."

[servingmichael]

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.

[uberboned]

"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.

[servingmichael]

"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.