(no subject)

[no-npc-here.livejournal.com]

Date: June 1, 2000
Setting: Heaven
Status: Private - Gabriel and NPC (Complete)
Summary: Gabriel returns to Heaven to fulfill his promise to Ellie.




Her shoes clicked as she walked, a slow, patient rhythm across a ground which was both solid and insubstantial at once. The pale stone beneath her feet was wound through with threads of darker colors: pink, or blue, or gold. It was hard ever to be sure, because unlike the marble it resembled the colors were ever-changing, indulently crossing paths, shifting, changing, like lazy clouds passing through a sunset.

She smiled when she saw him, as tall and stolid as any of the carved pillars that supported the roof far above their heads, his expression easily etched of the same cool stone. "Hallo, Gabriel," she said, shifting the files she carried from the crook of one arm to the other.

"Dobiel." It was clipped but not unkind: simply businesslike. So very like the Messenger. He smiled faintly, but his blue eyes seemed distant, distracted, as though he could not quite pull his awareness away from his surroundings to focus on her.

"Anything in particular I can help you find?"

"No," he said, shaking his head, and then just as assuredly, "Yes. I'm actually looking for one of... of Michael's records. They don't seem to be with the regular reports. It would have been about fifteen years ago..."

Her expression faltered for only a moment, a flash of something - discomfort, perhaps, or something deeper - in her wide eyes before she was tilting her head with a sweet smile. "Of course. Right this way, please." She turned about promptly with a toss of blonde hair and a swish of her skirt; the official sound her heels made as they clicked on the floor echoed up, up through the vaulted ceiling and out, quite literally, into eternity.

Gabriel followed dutifully, hands in his pockets as he strode at her side. His aura struck her as different: worn, somehow, and yet all the brighter for it, as though the ceremony had been stripped away leaving naught but his own gentle faith to shine around him. Earth always changed him, she'd noted over the centuries she'd spent working around him, though she doubted very much that he realized just how different he seemed now as she peered at him from the very corner of her vision.

"Things seem quiet around here," he remarked thoughtfully; spoken so softly, his eyes working over the graceful lines and arches of their ethereal surroundings, she wasn't even sure she was meant to answer.

"A bit deceptive, I'm afraid," she replied, wincing as her own words seemed to pierce the thoughtful silence of his reverie, drawing pale blue eyes back to focus on her. "Things have been a little, well... hectic, what with recent events."

"Here, too?" he asked, and she could practically hear the weary sigh in his voice.

A moment passed in which neither of them spoke, Dobiel fighting to construct the proper questions in her mind. She'd heard the rumors, of course, regarding the Antichrist's playhouse set up somewhere north of London. She longed to ask Gabriel about it, to question him about the plethora of beings, mortal and immortal alike; to ask of him of the events which had preceded Michael's Fall, something that still hung as a vague but perilous threat over each of their heads, or if the boy who looked so much like his Fallen father were really strong enough to draw to him so many of the universe's most powerful entities with little explanation.

But she knew Gabriel would not approve - would, more importantly, not tell her - if she were too blatant, so she left her curiosity to hang in the perimeter of her consciousness, and the silence swam pervasively around them.

"You've been all right, though?" he asked finally, cautiously, words straining as though there were things he longed to tell her, but which he dare not give voice to.

"Fine, thank you. And I trust you've been well?"

"Busy," he said, in the same way he'd said quite predictably for the past six thousand years: as though being busy were both a curse and the most desirable blessing in existence. Then, his eyes swept over her critically. "When did you start wearing glasses?"

"1956."

"Oh."

"Aziraphale liked them. He said they suited me."

"Sure, sure," but he was lost again, gazing about at the cool stone of white walls, pale and lucid as if they held some secret source of light in their depths.

She paused in front the last door on the left, gesturing. "Michael's records should be in here. They're, er, probably a bit unorganized. There was some controversy in the library over what should be done with them after... after things changed so abruptly. There were a few who wanted them to be thrown out - afraid of what had happened, I suppose - but we managed to compromise with simply keeping them separate..."

She opened the door to a disarray of documents: six thousand years of one archangel's history, set down in files, folders, even scrolls. And now heaped in a backroom, she thought, not quite able to keep a slant of disappointment from her pink lips; it seemed some sort of sacrilege, these unsorted rows piled haphazardly on dusty shelves, in relation to the consummate symmetry and elegant orderliness of the main libraries.

"The records from fifteen years ago should be, well... on that side of the room, at least," she said a bit of a sheepishly. "I'm afraid I can't narrow it down much more."

She felt a faint flush color her cheeks when Gabriel arched a dubious brow at the scattered files, but when he looked at her again, a faint smile was stretched over his lips, and he said simply, "Thank you, Dobiel."

"Of course, Gabriel. Do... do you mind if I ask what exactly you're looking for?"

In one weary moment, the archangel showed all his centuries in the lines of worry on his brow; quietly, pointedly, "Thank you, Dobiel."

"Of course, Gabriel."

And with that she left, turning back towards the main hall, the patient tap of her heels echoing her retreat.