waiting for the end – rennegades backup

I have… struggled with this one. Mostly because I keep changing things in the drabbles for Paved and Perdition which retroactively change this and the three or four drabbles that follow immediately after it.

prompt: TEMPTATION
series: Wrapped Up In You
timeline: Waiting for the End
characters: Gabriel, Laufey-Serenity
words: 1629
summary: (A conversation long over due)

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A little more than a century after the death of Christ, and Gabriel the Messenger is still on Earth. He has remained to watch over his Father’s fledgling religion, or so he tells Michael on the rare occasion that his brother thinks to question it.

That, more than anything that has happened since Lucifer’s fall, is what hurts the most. Centuries ago, Michael would have been the constant watcher over his shoulder. He would have wanted to know everything that Gabriel was involved with, every message and all the possible trouble he could be getting into. He would be there to offer aid and even comfort. Once… well, once their brother would have been right there with Michael, scoffing and poking and prodding. He would teach Gabriel tricks here and there while Michael was distracted.

Those times are long gone. Michael has gotten so wrapped up in training Raphael on how to be a ‘proper’ Archangel, that he has forgotten that Gabriel was already one. Michael has allowed himself to dwell on their brother’s Fall, and on the destruction of their family. He has turned a blind eye to the damage he has done to the Host while he sits and stews on whatever hateful things Lucifer whispers through the cracks in the Cage. He has allowed those spiteful words to strike all too deeply, and now he can barely see beyond the final battle. No matter how far in the future that may be.

That’s not something that Gabriel really wants to think about. He doesn’t want to consider how many of his younger brothers will die for their pissing contest, either. So he hides; he hides on Earth and guides the new church along the path that Father has set for it.

He’s gotten pretty good at hiding, though any angel with a drop of sense to their name can still find him. All they have to do is reach out for the curious squish-crunch of Grace forced into a form too small for it. Thankfully, most of the non-human entities that populate Earth aren’t quite to versed in feeling out an angel’s Grace; to them, he is Nal. He, or rather she, is one of them. She’s just another pagan looking to make something of herself.

It’s not a hard sell to make when sharing the body with a pagan woman. Laufey has stirred and brushed against his grace every few years since that first year, giving him glimpses of memory and knowledge of how to use her powers. It has helped him to weave the story that has bound them to the Nordic pagans, and has become such a familiar touch that he rarely notices it these days.

He thinks nothing of it when he feels her stir this time. Nothing, that is, until a soundless voice rips through his Grace alongside a memory. The pain that lances through their abdomen is so unexpected that for a second he loses control of the vessel and it crumples to the ground.

“Nal!” it is the impetuous pagan that he has been whispering his father’s secrets to that catches him, hands curling protectively into her tunic. Gabriel can see greatness and power in the future of this nordic pagan, but without using powers far beyond what he has borrow from Laufey, he can’t say just how it comes to be. At the moment he is young and worried, hands shifting nervously to press against her abdomen and then her forehead.

Gabriel laughs slightly, and it is a weak, breathy sound as she pushes him away. “Settle down. I’m alright, it was just an unexpected kick.” The pagan’s brow furrows in confusion, but Laufey’s lips curve into a gentle smile that it had taken Gabriel thirty years to figure out. “Do not worry so, Borson. Nothing is wrong.”

“You are… certain?”

“Of course I am. Odin, if I didn’t know my own body, who else would?” Well, Gabriel supposes that Laufey would kwow the body better than he, and by the tug and pull of his grace it’s obvious that she is up and wants… something. To talk, most likely. It’s not really a conversation that he is looking forwards to, but it is one that needs to happen.

So she claps a hand on Odin’s shoulder, presses a kiss to his forehead, and whispers a blessing in Enochian into his hair. Odin makes a face at the kiss, and Gabriel finds himself laughing again. She braces himself against his shoulder as she lurches back to her feet. “I do believe, however, that it’s a sign that I need to head home. We will continue our discussion another time.”

“Yes, of course.” He’s still young enough that when a mother-figure uses that tone, he does not disagree with her, and it is a tone that Gabriel has forced himself to learn. She flashes another smile at him and flickers away, only going far enough to cover the sound of her wings. A moment later, and she is settling into the Garden; she needs time to commune with her Vessel, and this is the only place that she can think of where she won’t be bothered by angels or pagans or Christians.

He takes an unneeded breath and then pulls up one of Laufey’s oldest memories for them to speak in. It is an ancient palace sitting room, all beautiful Grecian columns and white marble. Gabriel has never seen the long destroyed Palace of the Serenities, but it is obvious that this is where they are. The Earth is a cool blue orb that hangs in the sky over their heads.

“Gabriel.”

He turns to face her, wearing Farbauti’s face once more. Aside from her own, it is the only face of his that she would recognize. “Laufey.”

“Pandeia Serenity,” she corrects softly, looking up at the Earth instead of at him. “You have been Laufey for far long than I ever was.”

He shrugs awkwardly and steps up beside her. Her gaze shifts from the Earth to him for a moment, and her face is strangely blank.

“How long has it been?”

“One hundred and eighty-five years. Give or take.” Even as he is answering her, he realizes that he has never told her his true name, and he turns to ask how she knew. The slap takes him completely by surprise.

“Two centuries, Gabriel? You took my life from me!”

Maybe it’s the heartache caused by Michael and Lucifer. Maybe it’s the pit in his stomach from watching Michael replace their brother with Raphael. Maybe it’s the century of hiding with the humans, or the decades of playing with the pagans. Maybe it’s just a part of Gabriel that was never allowed to flourish in his Father’s House. Whatever the reason, Gabriel grins wickedly as he laughs. “Oh Princess, the deal was that I healed your body and then I got to use it. There was no time limit on it.”

She makes a frustrated little squeak before she visibly collapses in on herself. “I want my life back, angel.”

Gabriel looks away with a frown, his moment of vindictive joviality vanishing as quickly as it had appeared. “Don’t we all.” All he wants is for Michael to open his eyes and see what he’s making Raphael and Anael and Uriel and all of their younger brothers into. He wants Lucifer to ask for forgiveness and come home. He wants to be able to walk through Heaven without thinking of ages long gone.

“I still need a Vessel, Serenity. My job is not yet finished.”

“Why can’t you find someone else? Why does it have to be me?” her voice is plaintive with a note of desperation.

“Because you are the last of your line. No siblings, remember? You have no nieces or nephews that I could move on to.”

“My aunts—”

“Only have half the bloodlines necessary to host an angel of my power, Serenity.”

She is quiet for a long time, and Gabriel has to admit to himself that he would miss being Nal. Her skin has grown comfortable over the decades, and the pagan magics that are available to him through her body are unlike the powers that his Father had given him. A shift to a new Vessel would mean giving all that up.

And he knows that he doesn’t have any right to that power, and that he should give it all up, but at this point he is not sure if he can. He has become addicted to her magic, something that should be impossible for an angel and yet… here he is.

“…I can still bare children.”

It takes a moment for Serenity’s words to filter through, and then the Archangel’s jaw drops. “What?”

Serenity looks rather displeased with her own line of thought, but she continues before Gabriel can get her shock under control. “I am still capable of baring children and continuing the line.”

“You would give up your own child to escape being my Vessel?” Gabriel’s face twists unpleasantly. “If I had had any doubt that you were a pagan—”

“Look,” she interrupts and her voice sounds strained even to her, “Endymion has not been reborn yet. A child of any other union would not be recognized by Mother. It’s… it’s not breaking my vows if they child is produced for a reason outside of continuing the royal line.”

“Except that it goes against that whole free will thing Father gave humanity.”

“The child won’t be human. Not enough to matter in any case. Gabriel. Please.”

“…I need to think about this, Serenity.”

As he slips out of their shared mental landscape, Gabriel is careful not to pay attention to the way his wings quiver. When he opens Laufey’s eyes, he ignores the way her stomach clenches. As he returns to Earth, he pretends her mouth isn’t dry.

This is a temptation he is not sure he can withstand.

Mary’s been bugging me for a couple of days. I should be finishing up Gabriel’s amazing pagan transformation, but here I am writing about the beloved missus Winchester. Le sigh.

Although this is set in the Wrapped Up ‘Verse, this piece is part of my personal head canon for the series and is therefore written without actually mentioning anything that happens in-verse.

prompt: DEATH
series: Wrapped Up In You
timeline: Waiting for the End
characters: Mary Winchester
words: 707
summary: (that which comes after)

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There are a number of ghosts, spirits, and poltergeist who are unable to tell that they are dead; that they are something that doesn’t fit into the living world. This is part of what makes them rage against the living so hard, and it is what makes them dangerous. That dangerous is what gives hunters a reason to hunt. Years ago, Mary Winchester had been a hunter; back when she had been Mary Campbell. She had been a damn good one, too, regardless of how it had all come to an end.

So she knows very well that she’s dead.

She never wanted to leave John and Dean and baby Sammy behind, never wanted her boys to grow up without their mother, or for John to have to learn to live on his own. They may have had their fights, but she loved him deeply.

But Mary is no fool, and she knows that it’s that sort of thinking that creates the ghosts and spirits she’d hunted all her life. She was ready for the Reaper to come and collect, although the Reaper wasn’t quite as ready as she was. Apparently it had expected to have to debate her down in order to get her to cross over.

That was how it was with the vast majority of hunters, and given that most of those died in the line of duty, that didn’t surprise Mary. She’d laughed a little and reached out to take the Reaper’s hand.

The Reaper didn’t get the chance to collect.

Apparently Mary’s ghost wasn’t the only thing left behind by that yellow eyed bastard. The being that was left in his wake was all darkness and malevolence, and apparently capable of possessing an unsuspecting Reaper. Mary couldn’t possibly leave that beast in her home, not with the way it attacked anyone who stepped through the doors. It fed off their fear, their anxiety, and their pain, and with the power of a reaper at it’s finger tips it could cause a lot of damage to it’s targets.

Targets that Mary did her best to shield and protect. Most of them weren’t even aware that there was something in the house with them, chalking up disturbances to problems and damage left by the fire. Even John, was finally let back into the house to collect their surviving belongings, assume that something crashing to the ground where his foot had been moments before was just structural damage. She kind of wanted to smack him upside the head for being so obtuse.

He wasn’t quite as obtuse when he caught a glimpse of her. Their eyes met through a mirror as she threw herself between him and the spirit. She knows that John damn near broke his neck whipping around to try and see her, but she hadn’t learned how to cross over into the physical world that early on. She grappled with the spirit and managed to keep it away from John until he left.

She’s careful to avoid reflective surfaces the next time John comes to the house.

He doesn’t come back a third time.

Mary doesn’t know what happened to her husband after that. She saw cleaning crews for the first few weeks, followed by the police when John turns up missing. He’s taken Sam and Dean with him and run, she learns. She’s kind of grateful for that. It’s hard enough to control the poltergeist around strangers, and she worries that it had been left behind to kill the rest of her family.

She knows that she would over extend herself if they were still here, and then where would they be?

She misses her family dearly, but she’s glad they’re not here. John will take care of them, raise them up right. They’d grow up strong and kind, and maybe they’ll be a little stubborn, but they’d come by that naturally. Both she and John could hold a grudge, after all. Despite that, and despite whatever damage that demon has done to her baby boy, they’ll be good boys. She’s sure of it.

She can feel the poltergeist stirring once again, and she sets herself for battle. She just needs to hold out here until a hunter can come along and rid her of her new companion.

well, I’ve spent two hours working on arts (20 minutes on Sai-Zo, 100 minutes on Jibriel, WIPs to come sometime tomorrow…) I think it’s time to get some Wrapped Up out there.

prompt: BREAKFAST
series: Wrapped Up In You
timeline: Waiting For The End
characters: Usagi, Gabriel
words: 687
summary: (sweets and theology)

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Usagi loves her sweets and treats as much as the next girl, but this is more than a little ridiculous. Actually, it falls under “Absolutely 100%, Grade-A, Capslock Is Most Certainly Necessary, What The Eff Is Wrong With You” ridiculous. Seriously, it’s been two and a half hours and Gabriel is on his twenty-seventh bowl of ice cream. Bubblegum flavoured, this time.

But twenty-seven! Ugh, it just isn’t fair that he doesn’t get brainfreeze!

And he knows it; he’s grinning an ear-to-ear smile and acting as though every single damn bit is a freaking orgasm. Un. Fair.

Her frustration must finally get through that thick skull of his, because when he finishes bowl number twenty-eight he puts down his spoon instead of conjuring more. “Ah, now that is a good breakfast.”

She fumbles for a moment, stumbling over just what it is she’s going to call him before deciding to just not call him anything. “A two hour ice cream binge is not breakfast and oh my god I did not just say that.”

“I’m pretty sure you did, Moonface.” His smirk is tinted in maliciousness, but she doesn’t let that bother her. It’s just kind of his default smirk, and besides. They haven’t seen each other for a few reincarnations, she’ll give him some time to get used to her again. “So what did my favorite human call me out for?”

Usagi has been trying to figure this one out on her own for a month now. It has been a month of restless nights and research. A month of tantrums and fits, a month of brushing off her friends and family and worrying all of them. She’s at her wit’s end, which means the only thing she can do is to go directly to the source.

“Laufey’s memories…” she hesitates to ask, but she really wants to know. She winds up looking down at her hands and fiddling with her ring. “…they don’t feel like they’re my memories. Not the way that Serenity’s do.”

Gabriel’s smile is surprisingly gentle for all that it is still a teasing grin. “You expected them to? Babe, Pandeia’s memories are bound up in your divinity. You’ll never escape them in any life where they wake up, and Usagi’s memories are from this life. I’d be worried if you didn’t feel a connection to those ones. Now Laufey… Laufey’s just a shade of a life a thousand reincarnations gone. Heck, maybe even two thousand. It’s no surprise that you can’t connect to them.”

“But you can still use my body.”

Gabriel’s amusement flickers for a moment, a troubled look entering his eyes before he masks it again. “Apparently.”

“Why? And how?” I might not connect to her memories very well, but I can definitely remember the state that you left her in.” It had featured rather prominently in her nightmares of late; from the blazing heat of sharing a physical form with an archangel, to the impenetrable darkness that Laufey had been unable to dig herself out of afterwards. She had died that way, locked within her own head and unable to interact with the world.

It is a terrible way to die, whether in the here and now, or in the sixth century.

“Why… I don’t know, Usagi.” He is being surprisingly candid with her, though that is likely due only to their long standing connection. “We… the other angels, I mean… we’ve always just assumed that the bloodline is the part that matters the most when it comes to a vessel. Of course, most souls don’t reincarnate back into humans every time they die. The nearest I’ve been able to figure is that your soul remembers my grace.”

Usagi frowns at him, opening her mouth to ask another question. Of course, that would be about the time that her grumbling stomach decides to interrupt. With her face flushing red, Gabriel smirks and snaps his fingers.

The table is cleared of the debris of his frozen treat breakfast, though it’s certainly not empty. Oh no, now there are cakes of all different shapes, sizes, and flavours scattered across it.

“Let’s finished breakfast before we get into the heavy-duty stuff, babe.”

Welp, I’m awake and caught up on tumblr… so lets throw down some more Wrapped Up. And then I need to finish the piece for OSI tonight. Apparently it’s due at midnight Sasktime.

prompt: DEALS
series: Wrapped Up In You
timeline: Waiting for the End
characters: Chibi-usa
words: 1518
summary: (It’s always been about time)

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Half a century ago, she bartered away the magic and power that was hers by right of birth, and in doing so bound herself to the mortal plane and a mortal life. The terms of the deal meant that she would be sealed within time, assured against the destruction of her own personal history and being wiped from existence. There were other side effects to the deal, however.

Forty-nine years ago, she discovered that without her power, without her divinity, the Key that had been her companion through so much would no longer allow her to step outside of the timeline. She could not step sideways through time, only forwards and back, and even then that was limited. She could only go backwards through the timeline she now existed on, and forwards only so far as she had lived in this century. She could not go home, and she could not return to Castle Charon and her great libraries.

She was all but mortal now, only the barest whispers of her power clinging in the color of her hair and eyes, and that was not enough to grant her access to the castle. No mortal had ever stepped within the bounds of Castle Charon, and now all her research, all her possibilities, everything that she could have done was lost to her.

Forty-seven years ago, she caved to her rage and bitterness, to the darkness growing in the gap her divinity left, and she made another deal. This time she wanted knowledge and power, magic, texts, anything that she could use to brute force her way into the future to fix her mother’s mistakes. Whatever it was that mother did, once she was back on the correct path, then the ripples meant that she would never have to sell her divinity, and this timeline would cease to exist. She would go back to the girl she had been.

The power that she dealt for was only a fraction of the strength of the greatness that had once been hers. Where once that power had been moonlight bright, the reflection of the sun’s strength tempered down to manageable levels, not there was only the icy cold fingers of a winter’s night to sustain her. She wrapped herself in it, uncaring of the damage it did to her being, only caring that she could use it.

The deal had seemed like such a bargain when compared to the earlier deal with Crowley. Tamar had offered her ten years of magic and knowledge for her soul, and she had believed with all the arrogance of thousand years as the only Heir of a Goddess Queen that it would be a simple task to figure out what had happened. Her mother was a simple woman before her ascension, so it would be a matter of days to use her new power to fix whatever she had done.

After that, well. It wouldn’t take much more power to force herself back into the time after the Rebirth, where demons had been wiped out and there would be no one left to collect on her soul. She would assimilate the new memories of the timeline, as she had done in the times before where she had changed history.

Only… it didn’t quite work out that way.

She could force herself further forwards along the timeline, yes, but if she went beyond the ten year limit of her contract the Hell hounds would come for her. She could hear the baying and howling of the hounds coming for miles, and luck was with her that she always had enough time to fling herself back into history before they arrived.

Still, she couldn’t get back to Castle Charon; it was apparently warded against darkness and evil, and as that was the source of her new powers, it was warded against her as well. She was locked out and incapable of using the greatest resources in history to find a way out of her foolishness.

Though it had seemed like a long time when the deal was made, ten years passed in the blink of an eye. How strange a mortal life was, that she would forget how short a decade was when three years without her divinity had seemed like an eternity. She had spent much of her time locked in studies of magic and witchcraft. Those times where she left her studies were only to search out contacts and other methods of research, all in the name of fixing whatever it was her mother had done.

The night that the Hell hounds came for her almost came as a surprise. It couldn’t, not truly, not when she had been counting down the days, but it was upon her before she considered herself prepared. She didn’t have a way out of the contract, not yet, but she did have a way to… extend it a bit.

She used the Key and threw herself backwards once again. Not to any point within the contract period, as that would be tempting things too much. No, this time she went a century before her first deal was made with the hope that this would give her the time she needed. Time to contemplate and study, to think and remember on lessons long faded and magic nearly forgotten. She only spent a handful of years in that period before she could hear the howls and again she went back.

Any time that the hounds were let loose for some other poor soul, she could hear them. She knew that they would come for her if their master or mistress didn’t call them back immediately, and it built a terrifying panic in her. It became all but instinct to throw herself further backwards in time at the first faint howls.

She just needed a little more time, that’s all. Just a little bit, so that she could figure out how to escape the hounds and the deal, figure out how to fix the mistakes her mother made that led her down this path. Though as the years crawled on in this terrible hunt, it became more about her own survival than about anything upstream.

She made a mistake. There is, after all, only so long one can run before one’s luck runs out, and as her mortal body grew older and frailer it became harder for her to escape. When she jumped from the early fifteenth century into the middle of the fourteenth, she was a crone of sixty-five, and had nearly lost her legs to the beasts that had burst into her cloister. She hadn’t had the time necessary to guide the time magic to some place safe.

Not that she understood the danger that she’d placed herself in; the fourteenth century was a period of time all but lost to her people. In all honesty, there was little that remained of any century before Lucifer’s rise, and so she did not know of the Black Death. She did not know of the plague that would kill millions.

In this, she made another mistake. She was an old woman now, not expected to live much longer even without the hounds at her heels. So she grew close to the people she settled in with. She taught them, she celebrated with them, she loved them, and she allowed herself to connect in ways that she hadn’t done since the year her contract came due.

She made friends. Friends who began to die from disease and plague.

She was something of a miracle worker in the village, her focus on them intense in a way that she had not been in decades. She forced her demonic magics into the patterns she had long ago learned for healing, half forgotten memories of her mother’s guiding hands and soft voice. She had almost forgotten the woman who had raised her in her hatred for the woman who’s mistakes had caused her to destroy herself.

She didn’t hear the Hell hounds this time. Their voices were hidden by the wailing and screaming of the bereaved, and by the blood that pounded in her ears as she forced herself and her magic to the limits. She was trying, dear lord how she was trying, to make up for all the evil she had done, all the hate she had spread.

It had been clear to her, in the moment that she allowed Wise Man’s magic to slip into the cracks of her soul, that she would come to a bad end. She wasn’t quite sure how it was that she had forgotten it in the years since then, but she had. All that had saved her back then was her mother’s love, and Serenity’s believe in forgiveness. She had forgiven. She had saved. She had healed.

As much as she had tried for this one village, Small Lady would never be able to reach that level of light and love and trust with her divinity gone. She wouldn’t be given the chance to even retrieve her birthright, not with her soul turned black and the hell hounds at the door.

She didn’t have the time any more.

Her door shattered inwards.

Second one for the night. And last, I think. I need to sleep so I am well rested for job hunting tomorrow. Ugh.

prompt: STEPS
series: Wrapped Up In You
timeline: Waiting for the End
characters: Chibi-usa, Crowley
words: 718
summary: (It’s not his first deal)

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This is hardly his first deal as a crossroads demon, but it is close. His fourth deal sees him summoned to an ancient and lonely crossing of paths in the far north of Scotland. He has yet to collect even one of the deals he’s made, and so he has little power of his own to call upon; he can feel the watchful eyes of his “sponsor” in the darkness behind him, an ever careful eye to ensure he does not steal any of her power for his own. After all, it will be her power that will actually make the deal, even if it his name on the contract. He is not yet strong enough to grant anything bu the most minor of arrangements.

Settling into the feel of his meat suit, he takes a moment of inspect this new supplicant. She is kneeling on the ground, long hair spilling in thick waves from the two tails it has been pulled up in. It is a strange color under the moonlight, pale but not in the way blond hair would be… given the local, he guesses it’s a pale shade of red, though he’s never seen any quite that light. The girl is ten years or so, no older than twelve, and wasn’t that a treat.

Children had always been so much easier to trick, even when he’d been a mortal man.

“Hello child.”

It is when she turns that he realizes that this is so much more than just easy pickings. This is truly a special occasion, one where he had a chance to break the bonds that tie him to his sponsor in one move; the child is not human. He can’t feel the power that is locked tightly within her, but he can see it in her ruby red eyes. Darkness curls around her ancient being, and he can see enough of it that it makes his sponsor look like a newborn pup.

Before anything else can be said, she flickers. The child, with her power and age and darkness is gone, disappeared into the form of a woman of some twenty years. Her cheeks are splotchy with tears, and her eyes reflect nothing but desperation. She opens her mouth as though to beg, her hangs reaching outwards… and then it is the Pagan child who’s fingers curl around his meat suit’s wrists.

“I need your help,” her voice fluctuates and fractures, changing with her shape. For a moment she is the girl, and the next she is the woman.

“That’s why I’m here,” his voice isn’t quite as smooth and cultured as he had been aiming for. The longing and desire for her power has turned his words husky and low, but he can work with that.

The woman’s eyes narrow, but the girl smiles bright and widely. The reactions are too different to be the same person, and it comes to him rather abruptly. This isn’t just a crossing of roads, but a crossing of fate. The human woman and the Pagan child are occupying the same time and place, but they are most assuredly not the same soul. However it is possible, the Pagan is being erased; but someone needs to be here to call upon the crossroads, and so the woman has found herself in on the path of witchcraft.

Whatever manipulations are at work here, now that he has a chance to make a deal with a Pagan, he isn’t going to settle for anything less. He will have to work fast, of course, before the child can be completely destroyed.

“I don’t know how—” the child’s voice is echoed by “I need to know how—” in the woman’s voice.

“I can’t anchor myself!” says the child, and the woman wails: “I can’t watch her die!”

“I need time to figure out what mother did!” there is harshness born of frustration in the child’s voice, and of love in the woman’s plea: “I need time to find out how to cure her!”

“I can give you time,” he purrs, leashing his desire and his hunger as best he can. “But I need something in return. Just a small payment, you’ll like as not even know it’s gone.”

“Anything,” the voices twin together in twisted harmony, and Crowley smiles cold and cruel.

“All I want, little Goddess, is your divinity.”

been awhile since I posted any fic stuff. So I’ll be posting a couple of ‘em tonight.

prompt: LAST RITES
series: Wrapped Up In You
timeline: Waiting for the End
characters: Chibi-usa, Setsuna, Demon
words: 891
summary: (It falls to her now)

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It has been far too long.

This is not the first time that she has seen the ritual in play, seen the lengths that the Guardian would go to in order to ensure that she and her world would come into being. Pluto has invested so much of herself into this course of action, that it comes as no surprise that she would bind her life and divinity to it to hold everything together when her beloved mother faltered along the path. She has been the Witness to the trances and rituals of the Guardian of Time for seven hundred years, one of the few duties her mother allowed her to have while her growth was halted.

Normally, the need to hold the timeline together lasted a few hours here and there. There are rare but memorable times where it took a day, and once even two; after wards, Setsuna would untangle herself from the weave. Destiny would march ever on wards as was it’s wont. The End would always arrive on time, and with it came the Rebirth. It had to, if only because she was born after the Rebirth.

This time, however… this time something was so terribly wrong. The guardian has become undeniably enmeshed into the weave of Time. She has spent three long years using her life and her divinity to force it to remain on the path it needs to take, and yet the timeline still jumps and bounces. There are branches where the Rebirth did not happen, and the End went on into eternity. In others the End was pushed back a year or a thousand years and destruction was wrought across all time. There were even a handful of times where the End did not come at all, and humanity rose to heights unimaginable.

She thinks that might be better for all concerned, but she is greedy. She does not wish to be wiped from all time, a child unborn; something she thinks would be worse even than death. In death, at least, there is the chance to be reunited with family and friends.

Fear curls in the bit of her stomach whenever she looks upon the Guardian. She can see the strain in her face, in the dullness of her eyes and in the graying of her hair. She sees it in the way that Setsuna’s shoulders slump under an invisible weight, and in the length of time it now takes her to just to sit up.

It is heart breaking and terrifying and Small Lady doesn’t know what to do.

When the day comes that Setsuna cannot even make herself get out of bed, she understands that her mother has fallen. There is no way for her to know what she has fallen to, or how to fix things, but she understands. When the Guardian’s eyes close and she turns all focus inwards towards ensuring the present comes to pass, she knows that the burden of fixing this mess is now hers. All she has available to her are the libraries of Castle Charon.

This is hardship only as she does not know where to start; Pluto has been gathering the greatest works of man and pagan, demon and monster, and adding them to her libraries. There are texts there that have not seen light on Earth since writing began, and others that would have been lost during Lucifer’s reign had it not been for the Guardian. Surely there is something in the collection that can give her some idea of how to repair the damage done, to raise her mother back up to the Goddess Queen that guides the Rebirth.

It takes a year, but she finally finds the ritual in one of the older works. It is an ancient spell of summoning, something that would bring forth a being of power that would be willing to aid her.

It takes longer still for her to find a suitable site for the ritual. Within the walls of Castle Charon she is safe from the jumbled mess that the time stream has become; the palace of the Queen of Pluto stands outside of time itself. A single step beyond the walls of the castle, however, and Small Lady would be torn to pieces and put back together a hundred thousand times, with a hundred thousand different histories and personalities. She would be destroyed as surely as everything else had came into being after Lucifer’s defeat of Michael.

As surely as so much is destroyed and reborn and destroyed again along the timeline to the confrontation. The flexing and fracturing of the timeline has rippled backwards as well, going so far as to wipe out entire human populations and taking their passages, pathways, and roads with them. There was no time after the End that she would be able to summon one of these beings, wiped out as Lucifer had wiped out so much.

She is forced to use the Key the Pluto had long ago gifted her with to find a site stable enough in the past. The back-ripples of the damage were stunning in their reach, and Small Lady is forced to step back several hundred years before her mother’s own birth to find a suitable crossroads.

Long minutes pass, and even as she decides that she did not do the ritual correctly, a voice comes from behind.

“Hello child.”

sitting here in a half lit room, trying not to think about the resume that’s in the other window. hmm. obviously this means I should write some wrapped up.

——- prompt: CHOICES ——-

January 24, 2001.

She could say that is was a day that she would never be able to forget. She could claim that she knew exactly what she had been doing, what she had gotten herself into, and who she was dealing with. She could probably even bluff her way through it, but the truth of the matter is that only a couple of weeks later the details have mostly faded away.

The point where things start to get blurry is pretty easy to recall. She can remember crawling out of her bedroom window and dropping down to ground level. She remembers the rush of unleashing her magic and assuming her true form. She remembers the frantic rush to the temple as a vague blur of rooftops and leaps. The fear that had pounded in her heart, the worry that she would be too late to save her friends… those she remembers clearly.

It’s when she gets to the shrine that things go sideways. She doesn’t remember the fight. Not the landing and speech, not the first blow either by her or to her. Nothing remains, not even to form the bones of her nightmares. It is as thought the battle never happened.

After the battle, though… she remembers standing in the tree behind Hikawa Jinja, her breath coming in harsh gasps. She remembers seeing her teammates, her dearest friends and allies, laid out around her. She remembers the certainty that they were healed and whole, with no chance of dying and leaving her again. She doesn’t remember why she was so certain.

She recalls sinking down onto her knees, half sobbing, when he stepped out of the air in front of her. She doesn’t remember what it was that he said to her as his introduction, but she very clearly recalls being annoyed. Annoyed and no little amount relieved. It was a feeling that burrowed so deeply into her the only thing she was about to compare it to is the feeling of comfort and family that the Senshi had always given her.

She had known him once, in a life before her current one, obviously. Known him and trusted him.

She can remember his name being on the tip of her tongue, and trying to greet him. She also remembers how he had barely let the first syllable of his name escape her before he covered her mouth with one hand.

“No,” is the first clear memory she has of his voice. “We’ve already sent out signal flares with that little light show of ours. Try not to dig me any deeper here, babe.”

She distinctly remembers knowing that, when she finally pulled his hand way from her mouth, it was only because he had let her.

“Why do I know you?”

The man looks so indescribably sad at the question, and it leaves her heart aching with sympathy for him. She can remember wanting to take the words back as soon as they had left her mouth, despite how desperately she wants to know how they are connected.

“Well I was just inside of you.”

She can only remember bits and pieces of the conversation that followed that declaration. The clearest images in her head are of a smirk and a laugh.

“You said ‘yes’ to me, once, a long time ago.”

There is an ancient weariness to him, and a heart break that could only be described as godforsaken. Something in that turn of phrase digs at her with sharp thorns of half remembered rage.

“You gave me shelter when there was no one else.”

More than likely, the reason that she doesn’t have clear memories of that night is because of how it ended. He had stepped in close, hands settling on her face. She knows that he was closer than she let anyone outside of Mamoru get to her, and remembers just how unnerving his golden-brown stare was. Remembers the slide of fingers up the side of her face before resting on her forehead.

“I will only ask this once. Yes or no. Do you want this?”

She doesn’t remember what part of the conversation they were at, or even what the conversation was about. She doesn’t quite know what the question was referring too, either. She knows, however, that she said yes to him once again. She knows this because she knows who he is. She knows what he is. She knows what she once was.

This is knowledge that has been seared into her very soul as surely as the brand under her left breast. It looks a little like a feather, shiny and white with a shimmer of magic to it.

She can’t remember her life as Laufey, but she remembers Laufey’s choice. Her memories of Serenity’s life are as filled with holes as they ever were, but she remembers Serenity’s choice. She even remembers Gabriel’s choice, curled as it is around her human soul. It is in the warmth and light and kindness that has bound them together since the first time her soul said “Yes”

—————————-

and now I am going to bed. rawr

Hmm. I haven’t posted a ficlet in awhile AND I got a request for more Waiting. TO THE NOTEPADS!

——- prompt: LIGHT ——-

It is with agonizing slowness that it begins to piece itself back together. For time uncountable, all that it is aware of is the light and warmth and comfort that surrounds itself. It takes so long for it to find the trickle of knowledge that lets it understand ‘female’, and so much longer to apply the designation to herself.

The disconnect between that and the next thought throws her for a time; as the seed of knowledge takes root and a vine works it’s way possessively through her, she wonders if this is what it feels like to be swaddled. Now she has three thoughts, confusing and tangled together: This is me! I am female! O but knowledge grows like a vine ‘round a tree! and The child is wrapped in linens and cloth for warmth.

She is grows like a weed, she thinks. The vine around the tree as pieces fit themselves together in the child, but she doesn’t need to be wrapped in linen. The longest day has come seventeen times since she was a seedling small enough to be swaddled… and now she has four tangled thoughts. What is day, and why is it long…?

Though these pieces of the past only result in confusion, she clings to each one with teeth and thorns. She won’t let them go. She can’t let them go; these are the fragments of understanding, these are the fragments of herself. These tiny scraps of being are all that remain of who she had once been.

In time her tenacity and greed pay off. Her name is Serenity. Her name is Nál. Possibly even Laufey. Yes, Laufey is comfortable and warm, a favorite blanket. Nál is the familiar wrap of silks and fur, the sounds of home. Serenity… Serenity is right. It is weight and duty and love so brilliant that when it dances with the light all she can see is star speckled infinity.

All three are hers, and she is all three. Each piece is a fragment of her whole, she decides, although it is less a decision and more a remembrance. She remembers Serenity and Laufey and where they had come from. Nál is still a mystery to her, but as she remembers the other two her memories come faster and faster. It is the sickening lurch and spin of pagan travel, and she rests heavily on the light to steady herself.

With each spin she learns a little more of herself, and the light burns a fraction more. The warmth fluctuating now; at times it burns as though she stands in the midst of a bonfire, and she is burning up from within. At other times, the sensation is more akin to being buried in an avalanche; it is all ice and snow and a cold so deep she feels her vines wilt and shatter beneath it. This is the definition of agony, she thinks, but her suffering is proof.

To live is to suffer, so to suffer was to live. She clung to that, and she knew.

She was Laufey. She had been crippled, but she had forged on despite it.

She was Serenity. Dead by her own hand, but determined enough to see her love again.

She was Nál. The last memory clicked into place and she called the light by name.

“GABRIEL!”

TRADITION DEMANDS FIC.

post #600 gets you more Wrapped Up In You. Another magical adventure in times long past, and another piece of the puzzle that is Gabriel.

——-prompt: MONTHS——-

The first month following his possession of his True Vessel, Gabriel finds himself absorbed in the study of the intricate knot of soul and divinity that was Laufey. It lays cushioned and wrapped as close to the center of his Grace as he can get without causing the divinity to ‘infect’ his power. All he wants to do is protect it until he can figure it out, and burning the soul out of existence is the exact opposite of that.

In the second month of his possession, the Messenger visits Zechariah in the Temple. He brings great news, and leaves with the old man’s voice. It is much later that he realizes that the act was one made out of spite and rage, and not because it had been part of his Father’s great plan. He wouldn’t change his reaction in the slightest, even if Father were to command otherwise.

In the third month Gabriel returns to Heaven. He’s not sure what is causing these minor changes and fluctuations to his Grace, and so he feels he needs the time to meditate on it. The worry that it is the Pagan’s soul that is causing the imbalance, he leaves her in the care of another angel and focuses on himself.

Two months of agonizing meditation and discussion with his brothers leaves him feeling himself again. It also leaves him with a feeling of despair growing in him; while he had been attending to his duties on Earth, Michael and Raphael had heard the pleas from a soul in the pit. As they rescued the worthy soul, their caged brother had spat invectives and abuse at them.

Gabriel’s heart broke to hear about it, but the words had very obviously struck Michael the wrong way. It was all his older brother seemed to think about at these days.

The fifth month saw Gabriel wearing his Laufey’s form again, and visit another family in another town, about yet another child. While he had been announcing the births of kins and prophets for as long as there had been Man, the sheer number of them of late was… unusual. He knew more about his Father’s plans than the majority of the Host, but he didn’t know everything. Not that that hindered the obviousness that something big was going to be going down, considering just how many he had announced in the last year.

He spent the sixth and seventh months getting very very VERY drunk. There had been a Pagan woman, one of the Greco-Romans if he recalled properly, who had been able to sense Laufey’s Pagan soul despite how deep it had been buried. Suprisingly, all that she had done was to smile conspiratorially at him before inviting him to a party on Olympus.

It was an ususual situation to be sure but there was something just so intriguing about the party. He introduces himself as Nal, and it doesn’t seem like anyone else around was able to feel Laufey. The party was unlike any other thing that he had seen before, let alone participated in. There was dancing and drinking, loving and laughing, and in this case a good bout of fighting, feuding and fucking.

The rigid form of angelic society did not leave any openings for such chaos. Everything had to be perfect, to follow some invisible and predestined path. The be able to jump away from the path was something that had been given to humans and pagans, and had been left out of the angels themselves. Over the course of his ‘pagan adventure’, Gabriel finds himself wanting nothing more than the glorious freedom and free will provided by the pagans.

He also found it terrifying.

It was a relief in the eighth month for him to be called upon to do his duty. Another woman was having a very special birth and it required his presence… his relief washed away almost as soon as it came about. The message itself was almost horrifying to behind, and suddenly not knowing his Father’s plan seems to be a blessing.

Still, Gabriel did as he had been bid, and went to deliver the good news to Mary.

The ninth and tenth months were spent watching over and guiding Mary and Joseph. If they were needed somewhere, it was his duty to make sure they got there, and to make sure that they stayed safe. News of the christ child would have spread quickly but for Gabriel’s intervention.

The eleventh month was spent whispering into the ears of kings, and turning their eyes up to the stars. In turn, the twelfth month was spent partying it up with the gods of the local pantheon. It was in that moment that he realized that he had stopped thinking of his body as a Vessel; instead he had started to consider it his own physical form.

On the 365th day after Laufey said ‘yes’, Gabriel wished for a body of his own and a life outside the confines of Heaven.

The thirteenth month began with the divinity cloaked in his Grace stirring.

My dad just threw a pencil and a notepad at me. He either wants me to draw or write, I’m not sure which.

So instead tumblr gets another page out of the Wrapped Up In You Verse! Which is what I finally decided on for the title of the Supernatural/Sailor Moon thing. woo

(oh hey, I got all the prompts out of the first notepad… where’s the second one??)

(…why do I keep writing prompts for Perdition is for Pagans when I’m not going to post them until Waiting for the End and Paved With Good Intentions are done?)

——- prompt: BEGINNINGS ——-

His vessel had a parasite.

Yes, he had known going into this venture that there may be a problem here and there. Forcing a bloodline to come to fruition early always caused a side effect or ten, but this was necessary. Father’s plans had been changing rapidly, and he had to scramble to put together a form that would last long enough to accomplish everything that needed to be done.

He had been half expecting the vessel to be born female, instead of the male vessels he’d worn since the days of Eden. It had been entirely expected that one or both of her parents would die soon after her birth in order to prevent him from simply waiting for another child. He had expected the weakness, the frail and delicate constitution. None of this would matter once he was wearing her, but it meant that there was a higher chance of her dying before he could get her permission.

There was nothing, however, that could have prepared him for what he found once she had been of age to be of use to him. Of all the problems and side effects that had been predicted, finding a pagan’s divinity using his vessel’s soul as a blanket had not been one of them. He wasn’t even sure how it had happened. The pagans had their own bodies, ones that had been handcrafted or born of other pagans. There was no reason for divinity to be hiding in a mortal soul in a mortal body. Especially not one that had been made for him.

He had called himself Fárbauti, introducing himself as a wandering healer who had heard tale of the weaver Laufey. She was weak and ill, but her wares were some of the highest quality in the region, and so he was not the first to come to the door and see if he could heal her in exchange for a new cloak. He had been allowed into her home, and until he had looked directly at her he had not been able to sense any of the divinity hidden within.

Once he had seen her, it was obvious. Her eyes were a luminescent blue, the only place where the divinity obviously shone, and her hair a bedraggled mess of blonde curls. She was the day to his night, tiny and frail compared to his current vessel’s height and broadness. It had felt strange to settle her back onto her bedding, pressing two massive fingers to her forehead and knocking her out before he attempted to find out just what the hell was possessing his vessel.

His Grace enveloped her, pressing in to heal the soul and brush away the divinity. Curiosity rippled through him as the divinity tried to bury deeper, but he wouldn’t allow it to escape him. Before he realized what was happening, however, the pagan divinity lashed out, raking tiny thorns across the edge of his Grace.

It hurt.

The damage done to his Grace was minimal, hardly even worthy of being called injuries. Just shallow cuts, like a cornered kitten reacting in fear; it stung just the same. Gabriel tilted his current vessel’s head, seeing only as an Archangel could see, though none of his curiosity filtered through to his vessel’s face.

Again he reached out with his Grace though this time he did not try to touch either divinity or soul. This was an examination, an attempt to find some way to separate divinity and soul from one another. On this second pass, he realized that the divinity was acting less like a parasite and more along the lines of a symbiote. The divinity had grown through rents and tears left in the soul by Father only knew what, filling in the gaps that would have otherwise destroyed the soul.

The divinity was also damaged, though not as much as the soul, given how it had regrown. He wasn’t as familiar with divinities as he was with souls, so he couldn’t say for certain what it was that had happened to it, or even how it was rebuilding itself, but it was obvious that the soul was sheltering the divinity. It should have been obvious in how he hadn’t been able to sense it until he was looking at Laufey.

The angel drew back, removing his fingers from the vessel’s body and releasing her from unconsciousness. It took the woman a few moments to draw herself out of the darkness of her own mind. A hiss of pain accompanied the opening of her eyes.

“Be still, Laufey,” his current vessel’s voice was a low deep rumble, like thunder in a dark night. He rested a palm on on her forehead, only the barest of pressure needed to keep her from rising up from her bedding.

“Fárbauti…?” her eyes were hazy and clouded with confusion. She felt… strange. There was a bone-deep wariness suffusing her that had not been there before, and she couldn’t help but wonder if this was yet another fraud who had come to her. There had been far too many men and women who had claimed that they could heal her sickness if only to be lying in the end.

As though he could hear the thoughts as they came, the stoic giant of a man bowed his head. “I am not able to heal you as you are.”

She closed her eyes, having expected litt… wait. “As I am?” the other healers had always claimed that they had some herb or stone that would be of aid, but never before had someone dared claim that she was the problem. The goal was to get something out of her for free, after all, and it would not do to anger her.

Fárbauti folded his hands in his lap. “I have a request of you, Laufey. It is not to be taken lightly.”

Ah, here it comes. He will want a blanket or a cloak or some other piece of her work before he begins. She was a bedridden woman, not a fool. “A… request.”

“Your body was created to house the power of an Archangel, Laufey daughter of Nál. Instead, something else has taken up residence in it, something that is making you ill. If you would grand me permission to wear your form, then I will purge this illness from you.”

That was nothing like what she had expected. There was shock and a thrill of greater purpose running through her, and she found thoughts stumbling over themselves. What was an archangel? What did it mean that he would wear her? She was created? By the gods? Like the gods?

“Not quite.” she startled as Fárbauti answered her very thoughts. “You are still a mortal woman, not a god. I am an Archangel; to see my natural form, your eyes would be burned from your head. To hear my voice, your ears would bleed and you would hear no more. It is because of this that we ask mortals to bear our power, our Grace, so that we may interact with this world. Your lineage was carefully chosen so that you, Laufey, would be the perfect vessel to host my power.”

She licked her suddenly dry lips. “And… of the man that you are… wearing now?”

Gesturing to his borrowed body, Fárbauti sighed. “At the very best, this form only as a few months to it. My power will begin to eat away at the body until it falls apart. Your body, however, could host me until I complete my mission and return to Heaven.”

“And this… this will heal me? Entirely?”

“It will.”

Laufey stared down at her hands. She flexed her fingers, but it was getting harder and harder to do every day. She had not been able to flex her toes in months, her legs all but useless for longer still.

She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

“Then… yes. I give you permission.”

Gabriel doesn’t sound like Gabriel because this is the Gabriel before he left Heaven. a+ explanation is a+