Work Text:
~~~~~~~~~
The water from the sprinklers Castiel had set off soaked through his clothes, but Gabriel couldn't be bothered to care. For the first time in untold millennia one of his family had found him. And as family reunions went it had been one of his better ones.
The air whooshed around him and he glared, almost a snarl. "What now?" Come back for mo-" the archangel stopped short, taking in the huddled figure on the floor. "Cas?" he quirked his head, eyes roaming distrustfully, before slowly approaching the other angel. "You don't look so hot, kiddo," Gabriel drawled, kneeling beside Castiel. "You're weaker," he stated flatly. Whatever was going on this was not the Castiel who had left here moments ago.
Castiel tried to swallow, choking on his vessels blood, this trip through time, though only a matter of months, still drained him dangerously of his power.
"What have you done to yourself, little bro?"
Cas' watery blue eyes tried to focus on Gabriel, "Warn... you..." he strangled out.
Gabriel's features contorted into an incredulous smirk, "Warn me, think you're the one who needs to watch out." The tawny haired man shook his head and with a snap of his fingers he was dry and Castiel was no longer a barely coherent blood spitting wreck. Gabriel squeezed Castiel's shoulder, and tried to play off his act of kindness, "You came all this way, I can't just let you die before finding out what's so important that you'd risk killing yourself over."
"You're dead," Cas informed the archangel without preamble.
Gabriel's eyebrows shot up comically, "Don't think so." He looked down at himself, "Pretty sure I'm alive and kicking."
Castiel rolled his eyes and Gabriel snickered to himself at how much the younger angel was picking up from the Winchesters, "You will be, soon." The strong sobriety in Castiel's fathomless blue eyes did more to send home his warning than his words ever could.
"How?" Gabriel asked with more calm and sincerity than he\d shown in millennia.
"You faced down Lucifer, allowing Sam and Dean and the pagan goddess Kali to escape."
Gabriel stiffened at the mention of his former lover's name.
"More than that I don't know... I was... elsewhere."
"You're certain?" he asked evenly.
"I saw the imprint surrounding your body myself," Castiel intoned quietly.
"What happened?" Cas had asked the brothers when he found out about Gabriel's death. He'd felt the shockwave caused by the loss of such a powerful being, but being cut off he had not known who or what had caused the ripples in the fabric of the Heavens.
"Stupid bastard saved us, that's what."
"Dean," Sam chastised, knowing his brother's flippancy was only a cover, but not sure that in his current state Cas would recognize it for the defense mechanism it was.
Cas nodded, understanding that his brother had finally taken a stand, choosing them and dying for his trouble. "Take me there."
"Sure thing, Cas." Dean whispered, only just realizing how much this loss was affecting his angel.
He drove them in silence back to the Elysian Fields hotel. Lucifer was long gone, his business there completed. The place felt different now, like a ruin or a tomb, the remains of something ancient and powerful.Cas quietly walked around his brother's body, his path tracing the broad expanse of Gabriel's wings. He grit his teeth, jaw clenching so tight that Dean was sure he could feel the angel's teeth cracking beneath the pressure. "No," he growled harshly, he'd seen too many dead angels recently and this one was too much. Gabriel might not be the easiest angel to be around, but he was the closest thing to family that Cas had left. Without another word he disappeared in a flutter of beating wings.
"Show me."
Castiel nodded, giving the archangel the time and place, and allowing him to transport them to the old hotel.
Cas leaned next to the doorway, watching as Gabriel walked in circles around his own corpse, shaking his head and clicking his tongue. "Gabe, Gabe, Gabe. What have you done?"
"Gotten yourself killed," Cas answered tersely.
"Your powers of observation are astounding," the archangel snarked. He huffed hard, turning his mischievous eyes on Castiel, "And what happened to you? You were never a barrel of monkeys, but you were more fun than this. What crawled up your ass and died."
Castiel pulled his eyes up from the floor and glared at Gabriel.
"Ohhhhhhhhh-kay, touchy subject. Trouble in paradise? Deano not living up to his own hype?"
Hard eyes narrowed, "I warn you Gabriel-"
"Warn me," he chuckled. "Warn me." He snorted, "Well you did deliver your message, go back to your human." Under his breath he added, "And have him remove that stick from your ass and replace it with something more enjoyable while you're at it."
Before Castiel protest a resounding snap cut through the air and he found himself in the backseat of the Impala.
Gabriel knelt down next to his body, tilting his head to one side as if changing the angle would change what he saw. The archangel stood, positioning himself so he would stand just to the right of himself when he went back to the day he died. "Let's see exactly what you were thinking."
He appeared as he planned directly beside himself. "'scuse us for a minute, will you bro," he told Lucifer, eyes sparkling with bluster and a façade of aplomb that had earned him the title ‘Trickster'. He placed a hand on his shoulder and with a snap they were in the same room a day later.
"What the..." Gabriel said, tripping over his own body. Regaining his balance, he studied his body a shudder running through him realizing that this would be him in a matter seconds.
"Unnerving isn't it?"
Gabriel glowered at his other self. "Ya think?"
His younger self snapped his fingers and their body vanished. "Better."
He rolled his eyes at the other man, before letting his attention stray to the broad imprint of his wings.
His other self followed his gaze, "They are impressive aren't they."
He nodded.
"So, we finally decide to grow a pair and sneaking up behind Lucifer is the best you can come up with?" Gabriel snapped, he figured he was allowed- he had gotten himself killed after all.
"I didn't exactly have a lotta time to prepare," his older self countered.
"That's no excuse for being sloppy. We're Loki, theTrickster we don't get ganked by our daddy-issues-having baby brother!" Gabriel huffed. "Do I even want to know why we did it?" he asked, knowing he didn't really need or want to hear it. He was pretty sure he knew the answer, he was in his own head after all, and it didn't have nearly as much to do with Kali as he would like to admit and a helluva lot more to do with the Winchesters and these wonderfully defective creatures he was realizing he was actually kinda fond of.
"It needed to be done," the soon-to-be-dead him reprimanded himself. After all he'd gone out fighting, didn't that earn him a tiny bit of respect in his own eyes.
"You've been hanging around the Winchesters too much."
"Yeah, well it's been nice catching up, now did you have any useful reason for bringing me here or can I get back to our heroic demise?" he asked with eyes that didn't hold quite enough playfulness to be convincing.
"Idiotic demise, from what I saw," his younger self scoffed, earning himself the kinda of glare he normally reserved for Dean.
"Ugh," he huffed. "Fine, let's get us out of this."
"Wha'd'ya have in mind?"
This time, the playful twinkle went from smile to eyes, instinctively gaining a matching sparkle in his older self.
---
"Don't forget the wings, nice big ones,"
"I know what our wings look like," he reminded himself in exasperation. Neither of them really wanting to think about the all too real shadows they were preparing to mimic.
"What!? It's not every millennia we get to plan our own death, at least not on this scale."
"I it were anyone but us, I'd say you were enjoying this way too much."
"What can I say," he blustered, chest pushing out with pride, hands open in a placating shrug, "the prospect of my continued existence puts me in a good mood."
Gabriel rolled his eyes.
"Just get the dying part right, alright."
"Yeah, yeah... I'm so underappreciated in my time," he muttered snapping his fingers sending them back a millisecond before they'd left.
As soon as they arrived, Gabriel snapped himself away, allowing his younger self to put yet another fake in his place.
The blink of an eye would seem to stretch for eons compared to the time it took Lucifer to plunge the sword into Gabriel's body
And as the angel's sword pierced his heart, Gabriel's original copy faded out of existence and bright blinding light extruded from mouth and eyes until the world flashed in a flood of pure, unspoiled, white light. When it passed, Gabriel's body lay exactly as he had seen it when Castiel had taken him to that awful room, mammoth black wings burnt into the tables and floor, the imprint scorched deep into the wood.
"I'm sorry brother. It didn't need to be this way," Lucifer whispered before disappearing.
His younger self began clapping, "That's how we should've done it the first time!"
Gabriel rolled his eyes, "Yes, next time I'll remember to have two real me's on hand to pull it off."
Smiling smugly, "You know where to find me," he said snapping his fingers.
------
"Gabriel! You're dead," Dean all but shouted.
"Aw, Dean, I didn't know you cared."
"I don't," he lied, despite everything the archangel had come through, standing up for their side, for humanity and that made up for a lot in his book, "but it upset Cas."
"I knew it!" he chuckled as he shook his head. "You two really need to get a room. There's enough tension around here without your UST."
Dean balked at the back-from-the-dead archangel.
"Where is my little bro, anyway," he looked around the tacky motel room as if the angel was hiding in plain sight.
"He's probably having it out with another liquor store," Sam replied.
Gabriel's eyes turned hard, a cold fire flaring in their depths, "And you dufuses let him!"
"Not like we can stop him," Dean snapped defensively, God knows if he thought there was any way he could've stopped Cas, he'd have done it in a heartbeat.
"Yeah, he doesn't exactly listen to us," Sam added.
The archangel rounded on the older Winchester, "He'll listen to you," he growled. "Or have you forgotten the whole rebellion thing?" He glared at the elder Winchester before snapping his fingers in annoyance and disappearing.
---
"Whoa, there little bro, I think you've had enough," Gabriel said, mirth playing in his voice, as he took a bottle of tequila from the stunned younger angel. He sniffed the bottle and made a disgusted face; if his brother was going to get shitfaced he could at least choose better booze. Shrugging he took a long chug of the burning liquid. "Uh, yeah, somebody needs to teach you the difference between firewater and real booze."
"You're dead," Castiel announced, more than a little confused. "Dean warned me about these," he waved his hand in a ‘you know the word' motion, "hallucinations. He said if that happened to grab a bottle of Jack Daniel's and find him," the angel nodded solemnly as if this was the most important thing he'd ever heard.
Cas was about to disappear, when Gabriel grabbed his arm, "Wait." He reached over to a miraculously full shelf taking the Black Label and exchanging it for the rotgut Castiel had mindlessly snatched off a shelf. "Ol' Deano will like this better."
Cas looked bleary-eyed at the bottle, his brow furrowing trying to make the letters come into focus. "Thank you." He looked at the other angel, "You're here, aren't you?"
Chuckling, "Give that man a cigar!"
The angel tilted his head, studying Gabriel as if still not convinced he was actually standing in front of him. "How'd you find me?"
"Dean and Sam said you'd gone on a bender. Not that many liquor stores in this part of the world," he shrugged examining his nails as if searching for his brother was no big deal.
"Thank you," he said, much more soberly, truly meaning it this time.
"Ah, no trouble," Gabriel waved the thanks away before he could get any more sentimental than he already was. "Besides, I owed you that much for saving my life."
Castiel nodded, a tiny smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.
"Oh, don't even start," Gabriel warned, but without any heat in his words.
Castiel lowered his heavy eyes for a moment allowing the smile to blossom, "You chose a side."
"Yeah, don't remind me."
"You chose our side."
Gabriel pushed the bottle of JD to the angel's lips, "Here, shut up and drink."
Shaking his head, turning the bottle away, "Should find Dean."
Rolling his eyes, Gabriel helped steady his brother, "You do realize there's no way we can win,"
Castiel nodded once, his face bizarrely serene, "But we will fight it."
Gabriel shook his head wearily, then snorted, "Well, come on, we've got an apocalypse to stop."