(no subject)

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

Date: June 9, 2000
Status: Private (Adam, Gabriel)
Setting: Hospital
Summary: Checking in on Mictain (cont. from here)

Adam's trainers made little squeaky noises as he walked down the pristine hallways of the hospital wing that smelled strongly of disinfectant. He'd slept for two hours. He could have slept for ten, but he'd promised he'd come back and Adam always kept his promises.

Turning the corner, he found Mictain resting comfortably, eyes shut and breathing normally. Adam checked his pulse, looked at the neat row of stiches, and glanced up to see Gabriel watching him from across the room. He waved a quick greeting, not wanting to disturb the demon or the little imp asleep at the bottom of his bed, and crossed to where the archangel was standing.

"Everythin' all right?"

Comments

[dontcallmegabby.livejournal.com]

Gabriel nodded, an expression on his face which held all the prim stiffness of a starched white shirt. The hard line of the sterile wall he leaned against had begun to press painfully upon his shoulder blades, but still he stood, arms crossed in front of him with a resolve he did not feel. He had shifted little from this position. He hardly cared to; there seemed little he could do in this situation, save wait for the demon's heartbeat to falter, or not. Even more pressing in his thoughts was what he should do: for this was no longer Michael, and he owed no favors to the other side. Could in fact, he tried not to think, bring only trouble upon himself and Belial by doing so.

And yet Adam had wanted him to stay, and he'd stayed.

"He seems fine," he said blandly. "Neither of them have stirred much since you left."

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

Nodding and shifting his weight to one foot, Adam studied the cast of the angel's face. "They'll be all right. But what about you?"

He frowned. "I'm sorry I had to leave so abruptly. It wasn't very nice of me, I know, but I felt like I was gonna collapse. You ever feel like that? Like you've gone past tiredness, out the other side and then run over?"

[dontcallmegabby.livejournal.com]

"I don't need to sleep," the angel said in reply, and it was true enough; he was not as partial to the practice as Belial, and found that the soul-heavy weariness he sometimes suffered was not cured by anything so simple. "Although I think I do know what you mean."

He glanced up only fleetingly, barely meeting Adam's earnest blue eyes before returning to his judicious study of the tiled floor before his feet. "I'm not surprised, though," he added, shifting his shoulders against the wall as he picked through his words carefully. "You, ah, expended quite a bit of energy here, earlier."

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

"I know you don't need to," replied Adam, "but sometimes you look awful tired just the same. You can go take a rest or do whatever you want to now, if you like. I can stay with them."

He ran a hand through his hair. "It wasn't so much," he said a bit sheepishly. Eying the angel, he added, "Is somethin' wrong, Gabriel?"

[dontcallmegabby.livejournal.com]

Gabriel met Adam's eyes with a long, steady gaze, thinking silently through a hundred questions before he finally replied.

"Is this how it is to be, then?" he asked quietly, nodding silently toward the bed where the injured demon still lay. "How many more like him did you expect me to help? Because you may play your neutral games, but I will not. I know which side I am on." Once he had begun, the words seemed to spill out, a harrowing frenzy built up between his ribs, expelled in a dizzy rush; and he did not sound nearly as sure of the statement as he thought he should. Yet still he clung to the words, forcing assurance as he continued. "My duties lie beyond these walls, and I will not betray them for this."

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

"'m not askin' you to," replied Adam calmly. "And you didn't hafta do it this time. If it means anythin' to you, I'm not expectin' any more demons to get seriously hurt and need your help, but if it does happen, then it'll be your choice like it was this time."

He glanced back at Mictain. "In school we learned about the Geneva Convention," he said, seemingly appropos of nothing. "It's an agreement from about eighty years ago to say how people should be treated in a war. I know nobody from Heaven or Hell signed it, but it says that when you've got an injured enemy at your mercy, you've gotta take care of him and in return he'll do the same for you. I know angels and demons don't care much 'bout what's humane, but it's somethin' to think about..."

[dontcallmegabby.livejournal.com]

Gabriel's lip curled, and he half-recoiled from the stinging remarks. Helping the demon hadn't felt like much of a choice at the time, but it was most dismaying now to realize that it had been.

A bitter laugh rose like bile in his throat as Adam continued. Surely the boy was not naive enough to believe for a moment that if it had been Gabriel who had been injured, any monster of Lucifer's horde would have come to his aid; to think that if it had been Belial who had found such misfortune...

But of course he didn't, Gabriel realized. Of course he knew. What the boy spoke was hope: he talked of changing the world, just as he'd been meant to. But in a way his accursed father had never imagined.

"That is either a very admirable sentiment," the angel finished his thoughts aloud, "or a very foolish one."

And then he paused, letting the question roll over his tongue, testing it, before he finally asked carefully, "What is it that makes you think any of this will actually change?"

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

Adam looked disappointed. "Admirable or foolish isn't up for me to judge. But what it is that makes you think it won't change?" he asked. "What makes you think it hasn't started changin' already."

He stared into the blue eyes that could be so compassionate sometimes and so cold at others. "And if you're wonderin' about if it works the other way, you'd prob'ly be surprised. If that was you over there, I'd bet all kinds of money that Crowley, Ellie, and even John would help you. And if it was Belial, Aziraphale'd be here in a second. Doesn't even hafta be the two sides. Did you know that when Uriel most needed help, it was Odin that saved him? Her..."

Rolling his eyes like any teenager does when faced with the idiodicy of his elders, he added, "You've fallen in love with a demon. So has Aziraphale. Michael Fell. Raphael ran away from him. Uriel's... dif'rent. Crowley's learnin' how to care about others. Beelzebub's learnin' how to love." Adam made a wry face but soldiered on. "That's all the archangels and half the archdemons doin' stuff they never thought they'd do with the 'enemy'. How isn't that change?"

[dontcallmegabby.livejournal.com]

"Trust me, I've seen enough of the drama that goes on around here," Gabriel muttered. He could no longer meet Adam's gaze, for he felt that when he did, all his vulnerabilities were laid out, and he was as bare and open before the Antichrist as Mictain had been hours before; but even after his gaze slid away, he could feel Adam's eyes on him. Deep and discomfiting, it made him wonder why he should bother trying to hide anything when those eyes could slice him in two, made him wonder what was left that Adam did not already know.

"And what's to say we shan't all follow in Michael's path?" he asked, fear lending a raw pain to his quiet voice that made his words come out dark and nearly nonsensical. They were words he had not spoken aloud to anyone. "What happens to your schemes if we all should falter, and wind up in your father's grasp? Or perhaps none of us shall be shown such mercy. Perhaps we shall all end up like Tali - as I'm sure you're already well aware what happened to him. What good shall your neutrality do then, when all sides have fallen?"

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

"When all the sides have fallen, there's nothin' left but neutrality," Adam pointed out. "But don't go thinkin' that's my plan."

He laid his hand on Gabriel's shoulder, forcing the angel to catch his eyes. "You're not gonna Fall, Gabriel. Neither is Aziraphale, Raphael, Uriel, or Israfel. Because no matter how much you love Belial, you love God more. Search yourself and you'll know it's true. You're ultimately loyal to Him and to Heaven and that's perfectly okay. I rely on you to be. It's the same with Aziraphale. Do you know how long he's loved Crowley? Almost as long as he's loved his books. But more than anythin' he loves God and I think he always will. You two have unshakable faith in Him and love Him. You trust the Plan even after everythin' that's happened. You're not gonna Fall." It was said with every ounce of confidence and truth he could muster. He couldn't deceive an archangel with false hope, but he could share with him his open candor and sincere belief in what he was saying.

Adam closed his eyes a moment, still weary, then opened them again to look somewhere between Gabriel's ear and shirt collar. "I know what happened to Tali and more than that, I know why. No other angel's gonna hafta die. The blood he spilled changed the rules and his sacrifice could be the thing that saves us all."

[dontcallmegabby.livejournal.com]

"I thought that was enough," he said on barely more than a breath, "I thought it would always be enough..." Gabriel was horrified to find tears stinging the edges of his vision, and promptly closed his eyes, taking a few shaky breaths before he dared let himself speak again.

One, and he no longer doubted the floor's ability to hold him. Two, and the fullness of Adam's words had sunk in.

Eyes snapped open, narrowing on Adam's ethereal face, and Gabriel asked carefully, almost frightened of the answer, "Tali - Tali died because of... all this?"

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

Adam looked at Gabriel sadly, wanting so much to be able to provide some comfort to the angel that he would feel justified in accepting, but all he could offer was the truth and hope that it ultimately helped.

"Not because..." he said slowly, trying to find the best way of phrasing this, "It's not like that was prophesied and had to happen, but because it did, it allowed this. I don't think you or Aziraphale or Raphael or Uriel could've done what you've done here before then without consequences."

[dontcallmegabby.livejournal.com]

The idea wouldn't quite fit in with his thoughts, some piece in his puzzle whose edges were all wrong; his brow wrinkled in consternation, but the most tangible result Gabriel could muster was to wonder how he was ever going to face Chantinelle with this bit of information weighing him down. He stored the bit of information - doubting that Adam was ready to say more - to make sense of later.

"It's not fair, really," the angel said, in a metallic tone wrapped with all the casual airs of having just changed the subject with a remark about the weather. "All of us, expecting you to fix things. To keep the rest of existence at bay."

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

That made Adam snort in amusement. "God never promised anyone that life would be fair," he said. "He didn't even except his own Son. And I won't pretend that it's been easy. But for all that I'm doin' my part, you all are doin' yours. If I'm providin' the safety, you're providin' the change."

[dontcallmegabby.livejournal.com]

Gabriel said nothing in reply, simply gazed at Adam with impassive blue eyes, and in that moment, began to feel as though the idea of such was more admirable than foolish; began to feel a twinge of guilt that the Son of Satan held more hope in his heart than he, an angel of the Lord. But awareness of the Presence once more settled over him, comforting, cleansing, like some light misting of rain in the way it cleared his head; and there was something more there, as well. Adam, he realized: his good intentions in that moment overriding the archangel's own sense of doubt.

He smiled at the boy, or maybe to himself, and remarked quietly, "You are infinitely surprising, Adam Young."

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

Sensing that Gabriel had found some of what he was looking for, Adam half-smiled and looked away, feeling a little self-conscious. "Well, bein' predictable is borin', right?" he replied. "But mostly I'm just me. I dunno how to be anyone else."

He turned to glance at the demon again. "So, did you want to take a break then?"

[dontcallmegabby.livejournal.com]

There were, as it happened, very few places in the infinite universe that Gabriel wanted to be less than this room of this infirmary at this time, but he restricted himself to saying merely, "I would, if you don't mind, yes."

[average-adam.livejournal.com]

"Go on, then," said Adam with a faint smile. "I'll be here 'til you come back. Take however long you need, Gabriel."

[dontcallmegabby.livejournal.com]

Gabriel started to reply, but the words seemed too utterly lacking in the face of what had already been said; so he simply returned the Antichrist's faint smile, and slipped away.