low_key_angel | The Angel and the Nurse

The Angel and the Nurse - Moose hunting

The Angel and the Nurse.

Sheltering in Heaven after barely escaping Lucifer was probably one of Gabriel’s more brilliant ideas. No one would think to look for him there – if anyone was even bothering to look. As far as the Host and the world at large knew, every archangel was dead or locked away and he was more than fine with that assumption. It kept him out of the line of fire which is what he preferred to begin with. So when Metatron started moving, Gabriel started acting as well. He’d never trusted the little prick, so as the magic in Heaven began to coalesce, he threw himself into action.

In desperation, Gabriel reached out to every angel he could trust, all of the old guard that had survived the civil wars and purges, bodily shoving them out of Heaven before they were ejected, before their wings were burned away into nothing. The fall would hurt, and he was rewarded with more than a few startled cries as he shoved them out of Heaven, but at least they could heal.

Faster. Faster. He has to warn them and his calls grow increasingly frantic as the power begins to build like a gigantic pressure wave. Not enough time. He won’t have enough time and there’s still one stop Gabriel has to make. One soul he has to rescue and take back to Earth with him.

They land hard, leaving a crater in their wake, but Gabriel shakes it off. The world could do without one more Starbucks. After all, there was one right around the corner anyway, right?

She’s still wearing the blue dress they’d buried her in, her blonde curls in disarray and her shoes lost somewhere in the disaster of coffee filters and overturned syrup bottles. Gabriel slides her hands into hers, helping Jessica to her feet. “I know, I know. A thousand questions, but let’s stick a pin in those for a sec, okay? You and me? We’ve got us a Moose to save.”

Sam was dying and Dean Winchester just sent up the biggest flare since Bethlehem.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It took time to attune his grace with the quiet pulse of Creation, to recharge his power and repair some of the damage that had been done in the fall. The air was cool and fresh and he felt better than he had in a long time. A sense of purpose with Jessica beside him and Sam on their radar.

Hang on Sammy. We're coming.

"Probably not," he allows with a grin, tearing into a packet of donuts as he hands over the clothes. "Places like this," Gabriel waves vaguely back towards the brook. "They're sources of natural power, echoes of Creation. I can use it to power up as we head towards Sam. I'm getting better. What about you, kiddo? You doing okay?"

"By the time we get to Sam, you should be on full charge." Unless they were driving through a canyon, and she was pretty sure there weren't any of those going east--just some mountains and lakes and the like.

"I'm okay. Just..." She steps away from the car, holding the bag of clothes tightly as can be. "It's all kind of surreal, trying to refocus. Food and not this dress will help, I think. I'll be right back." And off she goes to change.

Why the shoes fit so well, she'll never know, but life seems a whole lot better with a pair of jeans, and she's smiling when she gets back to the car. "I'm really not going to ask about why everything fits so well--gift horse, do not look. But thank you." And she reaches out to embrace him for the first time in who knows how long. He does. "This means so much."

The hug is warmly returned and he would fold his wings around her too if it wasn't so risky. So long. It's been so long since he's been able to hold her close like this. Contact is so different in Heaven. Some angels insist that it's purer - twining grace and energy instead of basic touch but not Gabriel. Nope. You can't replace something as warm and wonderful as a hug from someone you care about.

He kisses her cheek. "Guess I'm better with sizes than I thought. Glad everything fits kiddo. I think we can log a few more hours before crashing out for the night. If we get an early start, we should be there by tomorrow."

And it couldn't come soon enough. Together, maybe they could find some way to save Sam. To bring him back from whatever brink he was teetering on this time.

The hug helps melt away some of the tension in her shoulders, some of the worry in her features. That was something he’s always been able to do: Comfort her in such a way so that the most frightening things suddenly didn’t seem so bad because they were together. They would find a way to save Sam together.

Most of the drive is reasonably uneventful, until a stop here and there for gas or food (“Hey! Aren’t you…?”). Cell phone videos had popped up on various news networks and by the time they got through Ohio, it gotten to the point that a new hat and shirt were needed for Gabriel because he was still wearing the same clothes. “Just until we get there…”

By the time they reach the hospital in New York, it was dark. Visiting hours were going to be coming to a close. Jessica looks over at the archangel who had literally put her back together again for the sake of helping one man. What she would have after this was anyone’s guess. It wasn’t like she could go home. “Are you ready?” It was almost as if she were asking herself the same question.

Is anyone really ready for anything like this?

They've always been good for one another in that way, offering comfort that's more than just a simple hug - it's a promise. That whatever happens, they'll do it together. Just the two of them. Only this time they're doing it for someone else rather than each other.

..he's not giving up the jacket. It's a personal favorite, so it goes in the trunk until the heat dies down. But when you crash land into a Starbucks, it's hard not to get at least a little attention. Luckily the human collective attention span is short and in a few weeks he'll be able to break it out again. They make occasional stops for Gabriel to recharge at a spring, or a stand of trees along the way and he even takes the wheel so Jessica can rest up as they get closer to New York.

Dean's prayer had been like a beacon. Easy to find and drawing in every pissed off angel that had managed to snag a vessel so far. Nothing like a challenge, right?

Reaching over he takes her hand and squeezes it. This was going to be hard on all of them, but she would always have him. "You make for Sam, I'm gonna grab Deano and we're gonna have us a little chat, okay?"

His hand is gripped just as tightly, and she hums a quiet note of agreement. “Okay.” She smiles for him, and yes, there is some degree of concern in it because, hey… Patched Up Angel with his sidekick Mortal Again contending with a multitude of very angry angels, in addition to rescuing the dying… What could possibly go wrong?

Before she exits the vehicle, she curves her hand around the back of Gabriel’s neck, only to pull him closer so that she might kiss his temple. Maybe in comfort to him, mostly in comfort for herself to feel his warmth at her lips once more. Her fingers curl in his hair briefly before she moves away, grabbing hold of the door handle with her free hand. “Let’s go.”

The kiss gets a warm smile and a wink as they step inside the hospital.

Only it looks a little more like a war zone than a hospital at the moment. Shattered glass is everywhere, Gabriel can smell the lingering smoke from holy fire and hear voices raised in anger all around them. The other angels are also too distracted to notice two people running in while everyone else who can is running in the opposite direction.

Almost everyone. Dean Winchester, battered and bloody is pulling himself to his feet with a groan, palm still dripping with blood and at the sight before him he damn near goes down again, staring up at two very dead people in astonishment. Gabriel cuts him off before he can speak. "I know, right? Seems like only yesterday I was saving your bacon and here I am doing it again. Jess, be a dear and get into that room and start drawing over Deano's art work?"

"We've got us a Moose to save."

There is no point in trying to explain it to Dean right now… not when he’s obviously been knocked around a few times too many, angels are mad as hell, and Sam’s y’know… Dying.

The first door she opens leads to is a person on full-out life support, pretty much oblivious to the situation in the hallway. Unless Sam turned into a portly man of roughly 55 since she last saw him? Not so much. The second try gets her just where she needs to go. That noise? No, that’s not the ventilator. That would be Jessica’s heart breaking paired with a gasp.

“Oh, no…”

It takes Jess several beats to pull herself away from trying to fathom how and why Sam was in his current state and bring herself back around to do as Gabriel had asked of her: Draw over Dean’s work. Or realistically speaking, destroy the sigils. Amazing what a swipe of an extra sheet can do.

When she’s mostly satisfied with her hurried handiwork, she opens the heavy ICU door. “C’mon,” she whispers. “Should work.”

Edited 2015-06-19 02:17 (UTC)

The moment the first ward goes down, Gabriel is hauling Dean to his feet and dragging him inside. There is a badly startled angel still inside, looking at Gabriel in utter terror from the corner of Sam’s room.
Containment. Keep the room defended while he works to save Sam’s life. “You, head outside with Dean and keep our backs clear, got it?” He can only hope that Gadreel is still angel enough to follow orders without questioning and without fleeing and grips his shoulder firmly. “It’s fine. Let me take care of the Moose here and then we’ll talk. You’re not going anywhere, savvy?”

“Come on,” Dean grates at him. “We’ll hold the room. You just bring Sam back, you hear me?”

Gabriel is moving before the door even closes behind them. “Take his hand,” he directs Jessica. “We’re gonna have to talk Sam back, show him that we’re here and he’s got a reason to fight.” He’s.. just not going to make mention of the Reaper he can sense approaching.

There’s a warm flash of light and they aren’t in the hospital anymore.

When her sight readjusts to something like normal, the three of them find themselves in a thicket of oaks and tall pines; the air cool and the sun making a reasonably valiant attempt to shine through the branches above them. Jessica is kneeling next to Sam, her hand grasping his as firmly as she had been in the hospital. Her instinct is to rest his head in her lap, to bring whatever semblance of comfort she can to him.

“What now?” she asks the archangel, looking up from her position on the forest floor and suddenly feeling more insignificant than ever. “What can I do to help?”

Sam looks even more vulnerable laying on the soft grass, with his head in Jessica's lap. Small and human and fading away. "Oh no you don't. You're not going to do this," he kneels beside Sam on the opposite side, reaching to hold his other hand.

"Hold his hand, kiddo. Talk to him. I'm going to try and bring him back." Closing his eyes, Gabriel rests a hand on his forehead, slowly pouring grace into him, shoring up failing organs and breathing life onto the fading spark that was Sam's life. "Come on Sammy, come back to us. Me and Jess, we're here and it's not time for you to go."

He'd been ready to die. He'd been ready for a while, really, though Sam would probably not have said so to anybody else. Not that he wanted to leave his brother behind, but he'd felt for years that something was missing. Not just since he'd come back from Hell, but a bit before that.

Again, he couldn't have told anybody when or exactly what was missing, but he knew it wasn't there.

So, when he felt something trying to pull him back, Sam fought. He did his best to push it away, though it was insistent. And even with the amount of power behind the pull, he might have managed. Had he not heard Jess's voice.

It surprised him long enough for Gabriel to get a good hold and haul him in, Sam's body jerking as he pulled in a deep breath, eyes blinking open sluggishly. He found himself looking up at Jess, Gabriel's hand on his forehead and, for a long few moments, memories crossed that he shouldn't have remembered at all.

"Was it the bandits again?" he asked, brow furrowing. And not realizing that he'd spoken in perfect Latin.

At first, Jessica is simply enthralled that Sam is there and alive; that she and Gabriel were able to pull him back from the brink. But then what he actually says as he comes around sinks in, and while there are bits and pieces that she recalls of Latin thanks to Gabriel, this is one that throws her for a loop.

She squeezes his hand and manages a concerned smile, anyway. "No," she answers, glancing up at the archangel at the sudden line of a mostly dead language. "Welcome back, SammySam."

The familiar cadence of Latin brings back far happier memories and Gabriel smiles down at him, shifting his hand to simply rest in his hair. "No, beloved. It wasn't the bandits this time." And leave it to Sam to remember a moment from a dozen lifetimes ago. "But we're here because you needed us. Just like always."

Reaching his free hand over to Jessica, Gabriel touches her, helping to unlock memories of the lifetimes they've shared before, the countless times they've found one another and fallen in love. Rome, Brazil, Russia, she had the memories in Heaven, but it's not a surprise that they were shuttered away when he restored her form. "So you need to fight, kiddo. You need to stay with us."

Sam has always been good at Latin, even without the memories of his former lives. He had to be as a hunter and it had saved his life and Dean's life many times.

But for the moment, he isn't that hunter. He's not any of the lives he's lived before except that first one, the one where they first found each other and he fell in love with a god and a merchant woman who could have been a goddess.

He closes his eyes, turning his face into Gabriel's touch to his hair. "It's hard. I'm so very tired, Gabriel."

Amazing how the gap of the Latin fills in as Gabriel provides his assistance to her (Strange how the name she had called him for so long had lodged in her memory--perhaps the residual from being newly yanked out of the aether?). It is not secret that Jessica would do anything for the two of them--in the case of this life, give hers to advance Sam's destiny, whatever that may be.

But this? His being at the end of something so incredible and so ready to give in... It breaks her heart to see him this way. Sam Winchester deserved so much more, so much better.

Her free hand caresses his cheek. "You are loved so much, and you are needed so. This is not your fate, Sam. Not here. Not like this." Her fingers brush a stray lock of his hair away from his eyes. That was something she'd never tire of.

"Dean reached out to save you, Sam." Which was the case, but Jessica can't decide if it's a good idea to tell him that Heaven was currently closed for business. He would have been stuck.

Edited (It's amazing what I think of when I'm folding laundry. ) 2015-07-05 22:19 (UTC)

I know you’re tired, kiddo,” the weariness in Sam’s voice is enough to make his grace crack and bleed and he sweeps his thumb softly along his cheek. “But you can’t let go, not this time. Heaven has been sealed up tight and if you let go, I won’t be able to take you home. Not this time.”

Because what else could he do when he’d gone and done the unthinkable and fallen in love with a pair of mortals? Gabriel stayed with them until the end and gathered their souls up to take them home to Heaven. Tempering his grief with the joy the felt at finally being able to see his true form and to remember all the lives that they had lived together, the love that they had shared.

“Don’t leave us behind Sam. Find your rest with us. We’re here and you’re not alone anymore.”

His eyes flicker to a shadow gathering in the forest, a sharp-nosed figure holding a cane. Calmly watching. Desperation colors Gabriel’s voice as he strokes his hair. “You have to stay Sam. Please don’t go.”

"Dean?" It's the right thing to say to him because mention of his brother's name will get through Sam's fog faster than anything. He's been trained this life to respond to his brother over anything else, after all, and the past ten years or so have only reinforced that.

More than that, though, it starts to clear the fog of pain and confusion out of Sam's eyes. Though the inflection had still been Latin as he and Dean's souls had been bound together from the start. They had always been brothers, though sometimes they were closer than others.

Sam starts to struggle to sit up, only to be thwarted by his own body. He lays back down heavily, finally looking around. And pausing as he realizes that he's definitely not in the church he last remembers and definitely not with Crowley. Or Dean. "Jess?" Another moment. "Gabriel? How..."

The shadow doesn't move, no nearer but no further away. The lack of confusion doesn't mean that Sam's doing much better, after all.

She makes a reasonably valiant effort to try and keep Sam relaxed, even though he seems to be wanting to go find his brother despite the fact that he was more than a mess physically inside. She tries not to consider how his mental state is holding up, but the fact that they're having to talk him back and convince him to stay speaks several volumes. Jessica runs a few fingers through his dark hair and tries to ignore the heavy, mostly observant presence nearby. She'd met him before. Briefly.

"Dean sent a call out to whoever could hear him. A call to help you because, well..." She attempts a smile. "You're pretty fucking beat up, Sam." She doesn't swear terribly often, but sometimes, it's necessary. "Gabriel's been laying low in Heaven. He pulled me together again right before the gates closed." She sighs quietly. "Before the fall... to find you and to help save you."

One hand lifts so that she might run a thumb over Gabriel's cheek, the other holding Sam's head in her lap. "Please don't leave us, dear heart. Please stay." She struggles against the tears, though a few fall. So much of them pleading with him to stay feels so selfish, but where would he go? What would they all do? "Don't go."

"We came to find you because you needed us Sam," he takes her hand in his, still trying to heal Sam, to find some way to pull him back from the precipice. Even with all of the power he'd spindled up on the drive, it won't be enough if Sam isn't willing to fight to stay alive. "Dean called and we answered. We're right here but you have to fight, kiddo. I know you're tired and I know how much it hurts but you can't let go. Not yet."

"Don't leave us. Not when we're finally back together. Please, Sammy. Hang on and we'll take care of you. Just like we've always done for each other."

Sam blinks at them both, brow furrowing as he tries to work through that. "That...that wasn't supposed to happen. We were trying to close the gates of Hell."

Had Kevin been translating the wrong tablet? But Sam hadn't even finished things. He hadn't finished the last task so no gates should be shut at all.

It takes so much energy, but he reaches up, brushing his fingers over Gabriel's cheek, just as Jessica had done a moment ago. His hand falls to Gabriel's throat, though, fingers finding the line of something that isn't there any longer. "I...remember. You accepted by collar. And later that scared the shit out of me." He glances up at Jessica. "You both did."

The lives were all jumbled together at the moment. If he hadn't had experience already with walls breaking and remembering everything he wasn't entirely supposed to, it probably would be worse. Instead, though, it makes him feel warm, finally dropping his hand to where Jessica and Gabriel were holding hands. "I can't lose you both again." Even if he hadn't understood why, at the time, Gabriel's death had always hit him harder than it should have. Only now does it make sense.

Jessica bends to kiss Sam's fevered forehead as the trio touch as one again for the first time in... how long? Thanks to Gabriel, she recalls Rome--old, ancient, beautiful Rome, and so many others since. The most bleak times were always when they could not find one another, or perhaps two had but one remained somewhere in the universe; whether heaven or earth she had never been able to define.

"You won't, Sam," she whispers. "We're here. We're together. We'll take care of you; of each other."

As Sam's thumb drags across his collarbone, there's a flash of silver. Gabriel chuckles softly. "I remember. I scared the hell out of you, and you," a wink at Jessica, "knocked me a good one." Which he probably had coming. But it was a fond memory all the same as he curls a little closer to Sam.

"Just hang on Sam. I can heal you but you have to want to stay with us," he pleads softly, his eyes flickering back to the still, dark shadow. "You have to stay Sam. Dean needs you. We need you."

"Don't go. Please, love. It's been so long since we've been together like this. Please. Let me bring you back."

That flash of silver may just be something that Sam wishes was there. Or maybe it's his mind trying to sort out what's going on and seeing what part of him thinks should be there.

Or maybe, just maybe, Gabriel is still wearing it.

Before he can answer, a spike of pain goes through his body, stealing Sam's ability to breathe, never mind answer them. But his hand tightens on theirs, not pulling away.

It takes nearly thirty seconds before he's able to gasp a breath back in, body shuddering as Sam turns his head toward Gabriel. "I...I can't..." He swallows hard. "Need sleep. But..." He manages to flick his eyes back to Gabriel. "I'm not going anywhere. I owe you another punch."

He would fight. He had reason to, now.

The silver glimmer is not missed, and she smiles fondly at Gabriel's recollection of her clocking him a good one. Of course he deserved it--cursing the gods one moment and revealing himself to be one the next.

...then again, he did only reveal himself after he'd had reason to protect their little clan. The humbleness she and Sam had felt was nearly overwhelming, none more so than Sam's. For how could one so divine love a human like him so deeply? While the three of them had been connected for so long, there would always be something that ran so much deeper between the angel and his hunter.

In those tense moments where Sam's body clenches in pain, Jessica finds that she is quite unable to breathe herself. Her heart feels as though it's lodged in her throat, and it's only when the poor man takes that gasp that she releases the air she's holding. She makes a fair attempt to smile for him, lifting her eyes to look over Gabriel for a moment. Sam Winchester was going to fight. For himself; for all of them once more.

"You do owe him a fat lip, Sammy," she says, brushing some of that wild hair away from his eyes. "Sleep well, dear heart. We'll be here for you. Fighting like hell for you."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Braaaains.

Re: Braaaains.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject