Chapter Text
Archangel Michael wasn’t the only one who was distraught as the alarms in the city of the angels sounded. Up in his safe and secure office in the central structure, towering high above every other building, Archangel Gabriel flinched in terror and looked up from the blueprint he had been sent to annotate. His pen stopped where it was, leaving an ever-spreading, formless blot of ink on the paper.
“Sariel,” was the first thing he could breathlessly utter.
What in the Almighty’s name had she done again?
No. Gabriel dropped the pen and got jerkily out of his chair, trying to bridle his mounting emotional unrest. No, he couldn’t… he shouldn’t presume. Maybe this had nothing to do with her, never mind the unruliness she had displayed before.
He had to find her. Make sure his twin sister was safe. She was... was reckless enough to just storm out there, without a further thought.
With hasty gait and nervously twitching fists hidden in the folds of his robe, his bare feet tapping an unsteady rhythm on the office floor, he left his cubicle and looked around. Nobody was left in the workspace – strange; he hadn’t noticed them leaving – and Gabriel felt the urge to call out, but bit down on his tongue. The alarms indicated that there were battles out there, and that’s where they should stay: out there, where they weren’t able to hurt or besmirch pristine Gabriel.
Sariel.
Sariel, you damnable nuisance, you burn hole in the fabric of my existence, where are you?
While Gabriel rushed through corridors, threw open doors, checked nooks and crannies and felt for his twin’s aura, he carefully addressed the question of what he planned to do once he found her – or, rather, what he planned to do in case he didn’t find her. The very idea that he had failed to contain and hide her aberrant tendencies this one time ticked him off to no end, and he feared the consequences of her being found out by the likes of merciless and icy-cold Michael. He couldn’t deny it would be her right to cast his twin out if she gained knowledge of half the things Sariel had done – even more reason to keep these two Archangels well apart.
Sariel couldn’t be evicted. Not her. The two Cherubim had a destiny, a vocation to fulfil. They were destined to govern this plane of existence side by side. Not even Michael could…
And what if Sariel herself negated it?
Gabriel shook his head. Unthinkable.
The office building, however, remained cold and unresponsive. No trace of Sariel’s warm and feverish, somehow… humid and damp aura was to be sensed. Occasionally Gabriel turned up the one or the other lower-ranking angel having taken shelter from the brawling outside, holding onto and laboriously keeping each other calm, but he made a point of avoiding them as best as he could. If he found Sariel, he wanted to rush her to safety without any fuss – without anyone any the wiser.
The implications, the conclusions angels might rush to… it didn’t bear thinking about.
In time, however, the silvery Archangel had to grudgingly admit the painful truth: Sariel wasn’t here, had left her post for… for whatever reason. He had scoured the whole building, top to bottom and back to top again, and there was no trace of her to be found. What followed was that Sariel was out there, probably fighting, which, Gabriel now realized, made her seeking military training with Michael make a gruesome kind of sense, though his mind balked at the very idea of her, his immaculate cherubic twin sister, getting her hands or uniform dirty, or getting herself wounded in combat.
He ground his teeth and returned, head lowered, teeth clenched, an apprehensive shiver down his spine, to his office to stop by the window and spy down onto the battleground. He couldn’t discern Sariel; everything down there was impenetrable chaos, but he felt every nerve within him shriek at the thought that she might be killed.
Or worse, that she might… change.
Perhaps he was kidding himself, thinking she would have remained faithful…
Preposterous, he reprimanded himself, digging his fingernails into his forearms. It is imperative you have faith in her – she would never have done that. Think before you accuse one who matches your very own purity of… well, of anything at all. She knows what she's been gifted with; she wouldn’t have allowed anything to taint her.
The Archangel hugged himself, grappling for security and poise, and tried to connect with Michael – to no avail. Finding her was easy – she was like a towering glacier of sacred influence – but his words didn’t get through to her. It was as if he tried to speak to her through a thick wall of glass or ice. And what would you have told her, he mockingly asked himself – ‘if you find Sariel, grab her by the hair and drag her off the battlefield – and if you should find her fighting for the rebels, do not kill her, but return her to me unharmed? I will take care of her special case all by myself?’ There was no possible world in which Michael would have listened to that.
She… won’t be… fighting for the rebels.
Sariel… Sariel, sister, what in Heaven’s name have you done? How dare you betray me and all we were destined to be?
The Almighty!
Gabriel gasped at the thought and tried to will strength back into his jelly-like knees.
He stayed in his office as Michael, the very ideal of the triumphant Seraph, scored her victory over Lucifer; he remained there as the defeated made their wretched retreat out of the realm they had aimed to conquer; so he was there as a regular, unremarkable, forgettable soldier angel, his celestial uniform haphazardly mended and dusted off to a semblance of respectability, entered the room to report and sealed Sariel’s fate by dropping that tuft of her hair onto his desk. Gabriel managed to keep up his calm, unshaken facade until the herald had left and closed the door; then, however, the Silvery one slumped in on himself like a punctured sack of grain and buried his face in his hands to suffocate the whimper that issued from his throat. The pain was near unbearable.
She’s dead.
They had killed her.
Why, Sariel, why in all of the cosmos? What made you join in this fight? We are… our weapon is not the sword. We should have governed all existence, administrated it together…
The other interpretation was a dark threat, a sinister possibility in the back of his mind, but Gabriel managed to not let it travel much further than that.
She’s dead. He thought it almost defiantly, to rule the other option out without a shadow of a doubt. She’s dead, and nothing will ever bring her back.
How am I to continue without her?
That, however, was the moment where Gabriel’s innermost balked and reproached him; the moment that his cold rationale, like a balled, icy fist, whisked away his hand-wringing emotional desperation and wavering. What kind of faithlessness is this, he asked himself, knitting his brow in disdain. Will you really let this little drawback keep you from fulfilling the Almighty’s commands, and the plans She has for you, and Creation? Sariel – the Sariel she really was, the Cherub, die organizer, the messenger and diplomat, bare of destructive or subversive instincts – Sariel would have had nothing of it. Sariel would have been not nearly so weak.
Sariel… would have wanted him to punish her murderer.
Gabriel, adjusting his position in the uncomfortable chair, crumpled the blueprint he was supposed to be working on between his fingers and pulled his lower lip between his teeth. It tasted metallic, but the Archangel didn’t pay any mind. Yes, he thought, pumping with his fingers around the crumpled, tearing paper. That rang true. That was what he was supposed to do – not let himself be steered, led astray, used by faint little emotions and cave in like a house of cards, but take initiative, keep his advantage well in the corner of his eye and work with cold, impeccable reasoning.
Sariel needed to be avenged.
The Almighty have mercy on whoever had taken his twin sister from him – Gabriel would have none.