Archive of Our Own

Gabriel knew all his siblings. Really, all of them, even the ones who were too little to remember anymore. He'd been their big brother since the moment Dad made them, all the hundreds of thousands of them. He'd played with them, teased them, taught them - sometimes with the approval of the crèche master, but usually by sneaking in, stirring up trouble and leading a bunch of them astray for a few hours. They'd play hide-and-seek in nebulas and he'd teach them to cheer when stars went supernova. They had fun, and that was the point, even if angels weren't designed for it. "They are to be our soldiers, brother," Raphael would say over and over and over. "They are to help us preserve Father's creations against the Leviathans and Eve's terrible children."

Well, screw Raph. That might explain the stick up his ass, but Gabriel was living proof that Dad wanted there to be fun in the universe, and if he could laugh, so could they.

Some of them caught on. All a bit differently too: Uriel made wry jokes in a dark, ironic way that became his trademark. Balthazar became impressively sarcastic, and he and Gabriel would have battles of wit, snarking back and forth until one of them stammered and wrecked the delivery, and the other would make one grand final one-liner to declare victory. Rachel - Rachel was silly, and would clown around with their songs, singing her own variations on the melodies or going as fast as she could and giggling madly when it threw the others off. Some of them were sneaky and some of them were bold, some were just the right combination of both to be awesome co-conspirators for his pranks (none of them were really creative, but that was okay), and some were neither but tried anyway, and he didn't love them any less.

He knew them, every one of them, very well, but none - none were ever quite like Castiel.

The first time he noticed Castiel - really noticed him, not just noticed him in the crowd, was when there was no crowd, and little kiddie Cas had wandered away from the rest of the fledglings to watch the birth of a star. It just so happened to be the same stellar nursery Gabriel was crashing in after getting sick of Michael and Luci bickering. Dad hadn't stepped in to shut them up yet.

He felt more than saw the other angel poking around at the interstellar dust and gases that were in the slow process of forming a new star, and when he did it took him a second to figure out what the kid was doing. When he did, he chuckled and wandered over, sneaking up just because he could.

"You know, little bro," he said, making Castiel jump, "it's not going to go any faster just because you're poking at it."

The kid skittered back and away from the dense fragments of cloud. He didn't fumble to apologise the way Gabriel had expected (and he sort of pouted, because much as he loved the kids, it was still fun to scare them), just looked up at him curiously, then at the star, then back at him. "You could make it, if you wanted to."

"Yeah, I could, but why bother, right?" said Gabriel, plopping down into a comfortable patch of nebula to watch the show. "It's going to happen anyway, and it's not like we don't have time."

Castiel folded both wings and carefully sat beside him. "Why does Father make things grow into what they should be, and not make them ready now?"

"Tough question. I asked him that too, you know, when I was your age," said Gabriel. "He wouldn't tell me."

That threw Cas. "Why not?"

Gabriel made a face. "He said I'd understand better if I figured it out on my own. Said that to all of us, actually. Pretty sure none of us have an answer for him yet."

Castiel's eyes grew wide. "Even Lucifer? Even Michael?"

"Nope."

Cas was quiet for a long time, watching the gases glow as they got hotter and drew themselves together. "It changes," he said. "What if-?" but he suddenly cut himself off and drew his wings in closer. It was a nervous habit most angels grew out of eventually, and Gabriel deliberately stretched out a wing and nudged the kid playfully.

"What if what?" he asked, but Cas hesitated and then shook his head. "Come on, kiddo, I've only got all eternity - you'd better hurry up."

It was a new joke and one Gabriel was very proud of, so he was disappointed when his brother didn't laugh, but Gabriel's easy smile did make him relax a bit and in a small voice he asked, "What if changing is the point?"

"...Huh," said Gabriel, after a moment. He'd never really thought about it before. So he shrugged. "Could be."

Off in front of them, the dense patch of cloud swirled faster as it collapsed in on itself, glowing hotter and brighter as more gas and dust was sucked in. With their vision, they could watch the baby star twinkle on the edge of the vast red gas cloud or look deep into its glow to see different molecules flying together. Gabriel preferred to watch the action, see the collisions going on in the core and the infrared bursts they let off.

A few billion years later he would think it a shame that they didn't have popcorn to share. Instead they Ooooed and Aaaahed at particularly impressive bursts of light and listened to the hum of the spinning star. As more and more matter was sucked into the core, the pitch changed, and after a while Gabriel realised that his little brother was humming along. "It's like it's singing," he said.

That was when Gabriel decided he liked Castiel.

The next time they hung around like that, there were a few trillion more stars in the universe and Dad had started making planets with oceans and things that were born and lived and died, and death was this really strange new idea that Gabriel and his siblings hadn't quite got their heads around yet. Things changed, yeah, went from being atoms in a star to space dust or comets or whatever - that happened all the time, but none of those molecules ceased to be, never vanished. But these things, these squishy little organic things that were thousands of times more complicated than thermonuclear fusion, had something in them that could go away and never come back. Dad had explained it, a lot, in as many ways as he could, and it still wasn't sticking. He explained that had a friend who was in charge of it all, and that the two of them had agreed a lot time ago that Dad would make stuff that would eventually go away again.

Gabriel had met Death. He'd made a nebula explode in the guy's face and cover him with sparkly bits of protostar as a nice-to-meet-you gift. It hadn't gone down well.

Castiel found him sulking by a soupy sea full of single-cell organisms he'd been forbidden to mess with. 'Found' wasn't quite right though, because Cas hadn't been looking. In fact, he came this close to trampling his older brother as he flew across the planet's surface at full speed, and Gabriel ducked into the water just in time.

Surfacing, he sputtered. "Hey! Mind your elders, kiddo!"

Being wet wasn't a problem exactly, and Gabriel swam for fun sometimes, but he still grumbled theatrically as he hauled himself back up onto land, letting his mood cast everything in the worst possible light. The cannonball brother he'd evaded, and another angel some way further off, had stopped and were coming back towards him, slower now, cautious and apologetic.

"Now you've done it, Cassie," said Balthazar. "Told you we shouldn't have picked this planet. What was wrong with using a nice gas giant like Zachariah told us?"

"The view is nicer here. Gabriel won't tell."

Balthazar twitched, but looked more closely at their brother. "You won't?"

Gabriel tried not to be offended - which, right now, wasn't so easy. Balthazar was one of those kids he hadn't seen since they left the crèche to start training, and even angels' earliest memories tended to get fuzzy after a while. "Tell who, Zachie? Nah - he stopped being fun when Michael promoted him. You two are really stuck taking orders from him?"

Castiel nodded solemnly and Balthazar relaxed a bit. "Indirectly. Anna is going to captain our garrison," said Cas.

"Ooo, Annie. The one who had you all making a fort out of clouds in the crèche to keep from being caught at tag? That Anna?"

Castiel nodded. "She has shown a talent for leadership."

"Wait... I remember that game," Balthazar suddenly. "I - did I pull out one of your feathers?" he asked. Gabriel snickered.

"Yeah - you did. Sort of. I let you have it. You were trying to figure out why I had six wings instead of two."

A little smile tugged at Castiel's mouth as he watched Balthazar squirm. "I'm so, so sorry," he said.

Gabriel glanced at Castiel, who had turned at just the same time and caught his eyes. While their brother shuffled around in embarrassment, Gabriel tilted his head towards Balthazar and raised his eyebrows. Cas looked puzzled for a second, until Gabriel waggled his eyebrows up and down a few times and grinned. Castiel straightened, still unsure but getting that some sort of joke was being suggested, and nodded. Gabriel put on an air that was straight out of Michael's textbook - I Am Disappointed And Worried But Mostly Disappointed, Volume Eight.

"You should be," he told Balthazar seriously, keeping all amusement off his face (not easy). "That's the kind of thing you should have known by that age. Did you have any other learning problems we should know about, Balthazar?"

Balthazar shot a worried look at Castiel, who was keeping an impressively straight face, but he didn't answer, so Gabriel asked, "Castiel, have you ever noticed your brother having difficulties? Confusion, maybe, about things you understood easily?"

Castiel frowned and made a show of thinking about it, and Balthazar started to look alarmed. In a low voice he said, "Cas..."

"There was an incident, when we first began weapons training-"

"Cassie, no, don't you dare-"

Castiel hesitated, and Gabriel leaned forward. "Castiel, you need to tell me. I can't help if I don't know what's the matter with him."

Balthazar looked this side of terrified, and for a moment Gabriel seriously wondered if the kid (because they were still just kids) could actually be having problems.

But no - Cas replied, "Balthazar mistook our trainer's discarded wing-comb for his assigned practice weapon. He attempted to use it as a shield against me and it was destroyed. Master Virgil was... unhappy."

Gabriel muffled a snicker, keeping his Very Seriously Concerned look on his face. Balthazar, mortified, cringed and pulled his wings in tight around him, hiding like a fledgling, and he looked so adorable that Gabriel couldn't help it - he laughed out loud and clapped his little brother on the back. "You have a thing for feathers, don't you?"

Balthazar peeked out, confused, then looked between Gabriel and Cas, who had let a small smile onto his face, and realisation dawned on him. He whirled on Castiel. "You- you... you tricked me!" He was trying really really hard to be outraged, but their brother's smile was disarming. Forcing a frown, he said, "Cas, if you ever do that again..."

But Castiel was laughing quietly, and Gabriel was giggling, and Balthazar couldn't help it - he started chuckling, red-faced, along with them. He shook his head. "I hate you both," he muttered.

"Love you too, little brother," said Gabriel, wheezing happily and trying to catch his breath. Once he had it he kept on grinning and leaned against one of the boring grey cliffs lining this beach. "So what were you two doing here anyway?"

"Practicing aerial manoeuvres," replied Cas, "so will we be able to fight any flying monsters Eve might create."

"Looked to me like you two were racing."

The brothers glanced at each other guiltily. "Speed is an important asset," said Balthazar.

Gabriel chuckled and, regretfully, shooed them away. "Better get back to it, then, before Zachie comes to find you and whines to Michael again. Really don't need him on my ass right now," he added, to sort-of explain, and they didn't ask for details.

Instead they nodded in unison, way too much like real soldiers for Gabriel's liking, and leapt into the air, circling once until they were side-by-side and then, revving up the speed, they shot off into the distance.

Gabriel shouted after them, "Tell me who wins!"

Accounting for annoying things like erosion and tectonic shifts and all that, it was pretty much that same beach where, a few million years later, Gabriel found his strangest little brother at the shoreline, standing serenely as he was pounded by rain.

Weather was another fairly new thing going down on these planets that made it interesting to hang around on them - water-based weather, that was. Stellar winds and stuff were old news, and they didn't have the same flavours that rain and snow and all that stuff did. Water-cloud storms weren't like the slow roll of nebulas or the rocketing shockwaves from supernovas; they were loud and rumbling things that dripped everywhere and the electrical bursts lit up the place when the star's light didn't get through. It was fun to provoke them, ramp up the charges in one place or another to see how big a bang he could make, and that's what Gabriel had been doing when he noticed his brother quietly watching the waves roll in.

Letting the lightning continue naturally, Gabriel lazily drifted down towards the beach, and as he did he noticed something in the water his brother was staring at - a small movement. Oh. That. Crap, forgot about that.

"Don't step on that fish, Castiel," he warned, touching down and ambling over. "Biiiiiiiig plans for that fish."

Cas turned to him and squinted. "You do?"

"Well, Dad does," confessed Gabriel, stopping beside his brother and bumping the joint of his wing against Cas' in a way that he'd one day reinvent as the fist-bump. "He wants to try letting animals adapt to land and see if any of the species can get complicated enough to understand what he is."

Still puzzled, Cas said, "Why? We already understand Him. We sing His praises daily."

Gabriel shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe he's over the whole praise thing?"

He didn't care, not really - what species could grow bit by bit that could be half as interesting as angels? - but Castiel looked like he was thinking way too hard about Dad's latest experiment. Gabriel sighed - they were all over eventually, the universe none the worst for wear. Not much point getting worked up about it.

"Perhaps," Cas suggested, "Father wants to see if His creations will choose to praise him of their own accord. Without being designed for it, as we were."

"Well, as you guys were. Michael and Raph and Luci and me never did that much praising," said Gabriel. He shrugged. "I don't know, guess we'll see. Unless your shiny new garrison's going to be stationed over in boring old Andromeda for the next few billion years, lieutenant." He shook his head as Castiel shifted uncomfortably. "You guys are getting too old way too fast."

"I will try to stop aging immediately," Cas replied dryly. "Anna has hinted that we will be stationed here, but our orders aren't confirmed yet."

"Huh. Well, if you do get it, keep an eye on this little guy," said Gabriel, nudging the sand near the fish, who was valiantly heaving itself beyond the edge of the tide. "You can let me know if you're right about his potential. Hey, want to bet on it?"

Castiel shook his head and knelt to watch the little creature. "It's strange," he said, "how much potential there is in one life form. Father has given it the genetic keys to diversify into an almost infinite number of species."

"Yeah, maybe," shrugged Gabriel. This was getting waaaaay too boring for his taste. "Maybe one of them will have a sense of humour."

Technically, Gabriel had a job. Technically he had lots of them, but they didn't exactly keep him busy twenty-four-seven, and he wasn't all that diligent anyway. But every so often he actually did things because he was supposed to, mostly being Dad's mail-boy and checking in on all the garrisons stationed round the universe, giving them updates on Dad's Plans (when he ever actually shared them) and asking around until he had enough useful stuff to report back with. That he kicked back and spent time with his siblings off the clock between runs - well, that didn't get mentioned a lot. Everyone knew Gabriel was fast, and he still managed to impress Michael with how quickly he made the run around the galaxies, and that was without mentioning his downtime (speeding? He invented that game).

Best of the lot was checking in on the Earth garrison. Humans were getting interesting, coming up with all sorts of languages and stories and stuff that Dad had deliberately not helped them with, and it was fun to watch them achieve little victory after little victory - or fail miserably, sometimes, and laugh at their confusion. There was some quiet betting going on in Anna's team, and of course Gabriel had a stake in it, so when he zoomed towards the blue and green marble he headed first for the team's favourite hangout - the top of a low mountain overlooking some of the more populated valleys. That didn't mean much, with so few humans on the planet right now, but it was the unofficial front row seat to humans' latest antics.

A few of the kids were sitting there - Uriel, Rachel, Hester - perched on the edge of a cliff and chatting and pointing into the valley. Gabriel glanced over for a second (Huh, fire, already? Wonder where they got the idea. Damn, that means I owe Anna a trip to Andromeda), but then he noticed Castiel sitting on his own a few mountaintops over, eyes closed and oblivious to the world - meditating, probably, or just brooding - and it was just too tempting a chance to pass up. Technically all these guys were adults now (but so, so, so many billions of years younger than the archangels that none of them would never really seem so), but that didn't mean it wasn't still fun to sneak up on them.

Only nowadays his little brother was armed and trained to react to surprises a little differently than before - and okay, that shiny stick couldn't have killed an archangel, but it would have fricking hurt. He ducked the slash and spread his wings in surrender.

"Hey, whoa! Hold it! Put that away!"

Seeing him, Castiel sheepishly lowered his sword. "My apologies."

Gabriel waved if off and took a seat in the snow, snagging Cas by a wingtip to drag him down too. "What's got you wound up so tight?" he asked, mostly playfully.

Castiel just shook his head, weirdly solemn even for him. "I am... tense."

"No kidding."

Cas sighed wearily, and that was not a look Gabriel had ever wanted to see on his kid brother. "Eve has established herself on Earth. She has created more of her monstrous children, tailored to this environment."

"...Crap. We had a lousy enough time scrubbing them off of Mars a few thousand years ago. What happened?"

"We destroyed all the lion-eagle hybrids we could find, but she has devised a method of infecting humans and transforming them. We... were forced to kill two tribes of Neanderthals."

Gabriel winced and, after hesitating for a second, reached over and squeezed Cas' shoulder. "I'm sorry, kiddo," he said. Lightly, he added, "I know you loved listening to their their poetry. I hate to say it, but you might have to start writing your own now."

"It would be a fitting memorial," said Castiel, and Gabriel mentally smacked himself in the head. He would, too. And then he'd insist on reading it out once a century or so or something as penance.

Well, forget that. "Come on - up," he said, flapping his wings and hovering off the ground, "I've got to get the official report from Anna and you, bro, need to get between Uriel and Hester over there before they start raising their bets again. When'd fire come into the game, anyway?"

Cas shrugged but let himself be led into the air and towards the other mountaintop. "We're unsure. The usage spread so quickly, we couldn't pinpoint the source."

Gabriel shrugged, unconcerned, and landed lightly beside the three angels overlooking the valley. "Hiya, guys. We're here for the betting pool."

Hester, Uriel and Rachel offered greetings - "Hello, brother" "Sit down?" "It's good to see you" - but none of them were as cheerful as Gabriel had assumed in passing. Maybe he'd have put it down to them being more attached to humans than he'd realised, but no - Uriel, at least, had never cared much. Something else-

It clicked. "You've never killed before, have you? None of you."

Hester's plastered smile crumbled away and Rachel wrapped herself in her wings. Uriel just shook his head solemnly. Castiel touched his sisters' shoulders sadly, and Gabriel cursed himself for saying anything at all.

Thing was, there was nothing he could say to make it better either. Killing, especially a first kill, was awful. He'd been down for decades after the first time he'd had to deal with a nest of Leviathans that weren't going to Purgatory quietly. Michael had just said, "It was necessary." Lousy, lousy example of comfort he was.

So Gabriel sat down and told them that story, and what Dad had said the first time he explained death and Death, how the universe couldn't keep everything alive forever, because then there would be no room for new things, and sometimes that meant destroying something unique. It wasn't comforting, but maybe it would help.

When he picked himself up to go find Anna, he whistled one of Rachel's cheekier melodies at them - one of the fast ones that had always caused a frantic scramble to keep up and always always ended in a cacophony of giggles. It didn't make them laugh, not this time, but Rachel smiled gratefully.

Later, as he chatted to Anna (and yes, she said, everyone had been down since their first official kill mission, and could he help somehow? She didn't know how to handle it), Gabriel decided to have a talk with Dad - a serious talk, one where he said things clearly and irrefutably and Dad listened, the kind he'd always imagined in full detail but never actually made happen. This time he would, though. The kids shouldn't have to go through this kind of crap. He flew home optimistically, full of plans. Everything was going to be okay, he was sure of it. He'd make it so.

But then Lucifer threw the tantrum of the epoch, Dad announced that there would be an Apocalypse, that Michael and Lucifer would have to fight to the death, and everything crashed and burned went to hell because suddenly there was a Hell to go to.

Gabriel couldn't take it - he fled. It would be a long, long time before he saw any of his siblings again.

Making Sam do the Herpexia ad was genius, if he did say so himself. But making him into the car? That was even better. Gabriel chuckled as the Knight Rider theme started blaring from his TV and settled back to enjoy the show. Well, tried to. Having his furious little brother tied to the other armchair did kind of spoil things.

"Gabriel!" Cas seethed, wriggling in a hopeless effort to free himself. "Gabriel, do not hurt them. Let them go, now."

Sighing, Gabriel stabbed his remote and lowered the volume. "I'm not going to hurt them, Castiel. Weren't you listening? That's not the point here."

His brother kept glaring. "Your plan is going get one or both of them killed," he said. "I can't allow that."

"Pfft. Are you seriously trying to threaten me?" Gabriel snorted. "Good luck with that."

That took some of the wind out of Cas' sails. "I will do what I have to to protect them," he said stubbornly. Gabriel turned to him, surprised and starting to smile.

"Hey, would you look at that," he said, chuckling. "Aren't you adorable? You've gone and gotten all attached. Which one is it? Gigantor or Mr Angry Pants?"

When Castiel went still for just a second, so briefly that only an angel would have noticed, Gabriel burst out laughing. "Ha! You have. Oh - oh, that's rich. I like humans too, bro, but I'm not crazy enough to go falling in love with one."

Castiel scowled. "Sam and Dean are my friends. I will protect them both - with my life, if necessary."

Gabriel's smile faded again as the likelihood of that happening settled in. "You can't. I wish you could, really, but you're going to lose at least one of them." He hesitated. "I am sorry."

He meant it, and it was a little bit comforting to see that Cas realised that - he slowed down and went still, and stopped fighting his restraints. He let out a breath and shook his head. "Why does Father do this?" he asked quietly. "Why does he insist on allowing us to destroy each other when he could bless us with peace and contentment?"

"Now you sound like the Cas I remember," Gabriel said. He smiled fondly. "I've missed you, kiddo."

"Then perhaps you shouldn't have abandoned us and let us all think you were dead," Cas snapped. And yeah, Gabriel could admit that he deserved that, but he knew his brother really well, and under all that anger there was a whole lot of hurt, and it was nice to know that, even if he hadn't been a huge part of his brother's life, he was loved enough to be mourned and missed.

But before he could say anything too sappy and make this a soap to rival Dr Sexy, Dean's tiny voice strained its way out of the TV speakers - "All right, you son of a bitch! Uncle! We'll do it!" - and Gabriel hopped up.

"Gotta go."

Turns out, there's an afterlife for angels, too. There's an afterlife for everything, apparently, and the snails get this nice little place where everything's damp and mossy and they can eat leaves to their heart's content. Angels? Angels get this infinite sky full of glowing clouds like mini-nebulas, a comforting mix of stellar nurseries and the clouds that cradled them in the crèche that should be totally peaceful and relaxing, heavenly in the religious paradise sense that humans went on and on about.

Gabriel was bored after about five minutes. So maybe that was why Dad had never layered serenity on everyone in the living universe.

It was okay here, as far as dull afterlives went. There were a handful of other angels to talk to - most of them died back when Luci fell, some from both sides of the argument, but here, now, hating each other was pretty pointless, and after a few millennia they'd settled. Gabriel was actively livening the place up whenever he could, of course, but mostly, he talked to Anna.

Anna, who had a sense of humour - Anna, who was herself again, and had been in tears when she confessed to some of the things she remembered doing - to her siblings, to the Winchesters, and to so many others, right back to Egypt and some stupid PR stunt she'd refused to be part of until they'd dragged her off to Intelligence for brainwashing. And that- that pissed him off. He'd actually scared her when he leapt up and growled, "They did what?"

When Raphael arrived, he was going to kill him. Maybe Naomi had done the deed, but Gabriel would bet anything that it was all Raph's idea - it had his oozy smug superior fingerprints all over it.

For now, though, there was nothing to do but wait. Every so often another angel would appear, the last of their grace burning away as they fell in from whatever portal Death used to deliver them from the living universe. They brought news, gave whatever updates on the war they could, and Gabriel waited with baited breath, but neither Michael nor Lucifer turned up. It went quiet, and eventually Gabriel shook his head and raised a quiet toast to the Winchesters - "Didn't think you could do it, guys. Good job."

Then, another angel died. And another. They brought big news - of a civil war in Heaven, Castiel going up against Raphael in the name of Dad and free will. Right on their heels came five more, from both sides, all still arguing impotently that they were right, they knew what Dad wanted, and Gabriel had to actually be authoritative for once and send them off to opposites sides of the clouds. For the first time, he couldn't wait for the enforced serenity of this place to kick in and make them placid.

Then Rachel crashed in - Rachel, laughing, singing little Rachel, and she hit the ground wailing, shocked and incredulous. Gabriel gave her a hug and kissed her forehead, and was about to hand her over to Anna (garrison leader and all, she'd been closer to them) when Rachel said, "It was Castiel. He killed me."

And for a second Gabriel blanked, because for all he got that Cas had started this war, it was hard to imagine one of his favourite brothers actually murdering his kin.

Not long after, others from Cas's side came with the same story - killed as soon as they confronted him.

Then Balthazar, shaken and confused and horrified. "What's wrong with him?"

Then Raphael.

Then hundreds- thousands of others. They fell in, weeping and wailing, telling tales of a brother gone mad, and Gabriel watched in horror as their peaceful world lit up with burning grace.

"Oh, kiddo," he breathed, feeling his heart break. "what have you done?"