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[winged-healer.livejournal.com]

Date: December 14, 1999
Status: Private
Setting: The Garden
Summary: Raphael and Gabriel have a chat



Raphael wandered the garden and eventually came to a bench, sitting for a while. He had never missed his celestial home so much as he had right then. Earth was corrupt and debauched and now, on top of everything else, rather lonely.

The angel hadn't talked to anybody, really, since finding out about Michael and Aziraphale. It felt like being stabbed in the back, finding out that trusted compatriots were willingly violiating a rule he scrupulously followed. For a long time he'd been so upset he'd refused to come out of his room and after resolutely ignored everyone around him.

Things were starting to get lonely, however. He'd only really been comfortable with his fellow angels and now he felt like he couldn't trust even them. Everything was tainted and everyone didnt' seem to realize how serious it was. He didn't want to get in trouble; he didn't want to disobey...

But Raphael wished he had someone to talk to, someone who understood.

He sat on the bench and looked up at the sky.

Home felt very far away.

Comments

[dontcallmegabby.livejournal.com]

It was only seconds after sensing his aura itself that Gabriel knew something was bothering Raphael; it was almost tangible in the other angel's presence as he grew near. He was not quite sure what had befallen his fellow archangels over the past few days, but he had noticed both Raphael and Michael acting rather sullenly as of late.

Of course, he had been a bit withdrawn himself recently, he reminded himself, and had to pointedly steer his thoughts toward anything but Belial. Memories of the demon now tainted his skin just as they colored his thoughts, and he found it harder and harder to rid himself of the intrusive image of Belial's lips on his neck...

He fussed pointlessly with the cuff of his shirt, and with a stoic sigh, buried any doubts as he moved to search out his fellow archangel.

Raphael had not gone far through the manor's garden, and it was not long before Gabriel was smiling down upon the familiar face. "How good to see you, Raphael," he said fondly. "I've not run into you much lately. How have you been?"

[dontcallmegabby.livejournal.com]

Gabriel stroked the other angel's back gently in the arch between spread wings, shivering lightly even as the warm of Raphael's powers enveloped him. It felt odd to see his fellow in this light, and he wasn't sure it was his place to counsel Raphael in either direction. Yet some bitter voice in the back of his mind whispered to him that if one had to face these issues, they would be much easier to sort through with a fellow archangel and not -

Not a being that had Fallen from them.

He pressed his cheek to Raphael's red hair, catching the faint scent of cinnamon and sunlight, even with the sun's warmth so scare on this day. "I'm sure they would be glad to hear it from you, especially Michael. And if anything, I think, it's probably Crowley that owes you an apology, though I doubt you shall ever get one from him."

His gaze wandered to the spot where - just months ago, though even to the immortal it seemed like an eternity - he had spoken to Constantine. Gabriel felt now more than ever that he was surrounded by the graceful drifts of acrid cigarette smoke, his surroundings melted in a milky haze.

It stung, suddenly, in his chest, behind his eyes. Michael and Raphael had always been close, even among the archangels. And if something, somewhere in the cosmos, made it right for dear Aziraphale to be with that demon...

In that moment, the idyllic manor around them seemed nothing more than a fragile scene captured in a plastic globe, so very near to tilting, so easily subject to the storm.

"I don't think, my dear," he finished slowly, "that Michael would ever do anything to intentionally hurt you. However, perhaps this is a conversation you best have with him."