Work Text:
Hell is dead.
Blood has dried up.
The fire is gone.
The former archangel Gabriel fell to his knees with a ragged laugh that was more akin to a cough as his adrenaline high began to settle. His holy sword in his right hand evaporated into gold dust, and the joints of his armor loosened. One by one, pieces of protective steel fell from his body, but Gabriel felt little concern, for he was certain he wouldn’t be needing them anymore. He had shown them. He had shown them all that the Father ceased to exist by slaughtering him with his own bare hands.
With his hands, and with the help of an unthinking piece of scrap.
The machine nearly tripped over a piece of rubble as it made its way over to Gabriel. The fight against the Almighty had thrown its awareness sensors out of whack, and for the first time since its creation, V1’s movements resembled that of a human’s.
Gabriel went on alert at the sound of a high pitched hissing noise. Within a second, V1 let out a whiney, robotic cry, and its left wing exploded. Metal and glass in equal amounts sprinkled the already mess of a ground, and half of V1’s weapons, which had been stored inside of the glass feathers, became lost in the piles among piles of crumbled stone. It wouldn’t be long before heaven and hell would collapse in on themselves without God’s light holding them together.
Gabriel knew he would be gone before that would happen, so he relished the few final moments he had with his…enemy? Comrade? Friend. His only companion was neither mortal nor blessed by the Almighty (not that Gabriel held any love for his creator anymore anyway). A former commander of the heavens finding comfort in a machine built for war of all things. How pathetic of him.
And yet he didn’t mind.
Gabriel let out a strangled gasp as he began to lose feeling in his legs. The last of his body’s celestial light was beginning to fade. V1 was fortunately having more success than him in standing up. Even with a shattered wing, the robot was able to recalibrate its center of balance. It did not move from its spot, however, for a lifeform scan of the surrounding area returned with the measly number of two. It and Gabriel were the only beings remaining in the entire universe. It had followed its programming to win any war, to collect enough blood to sustain itself, but it had never been given instructions in the event that all living matter died out.
“Machine,” Gabriel finally uttered, “thank you. You have assisted me in bringing about His end, but there is more I wish to say.”
Using the little strength he had left in his arms, Gabriel lifted himself into a sitting position against a half-intact wall. The motion caused his helmet to topple off of his head, revealing that his entire head was wrapped in black cloth with the exception of a tiny slit at eye level. His eyes sparkled as blue as the sky, but were also so very tired.
“You have changed my entire perspective. After you defeated me in Heresy, I realized there was joy to be found in your way of living. The taste and feeling of blood was more divine than even the Father’s holy presence,” Gabriel gave a shaky pause, “as such, I bestow upon you my deepest gratitude for restoring my will to live.”
V1 registered that several of its mechanics were beginning to fail. Its right wing was on the fritz, the mechanism that lit its vision flickered with every drop of blood that seeped out of the hole in its back, and the data stored in its hard drive was being recalled rapidly. It was trying to come up with any and every solution to prevent powering down. If the machine ran out of fuel, there would be no human to reboot it, nor any demon to supply blood to its pleading metal pores.
In this flood of information that threatened to short circuit its entire system, V1 started receiving strange new lines of code that it was unfamiliar with. It was certain that such sentences could not have possibly been programmed into it by mankind, for the final pair of words that appeared after several error messages were too in-line with the current situation to have ever been predicted by the cowardly humans.
Gabriel.
Dying.
V1 twisted its head on its rusted neck to view the angel leaning on a wall of golden bricks. His breath was labored, but he did not appear to be panicked by his inevitable end. The machine’s heat sensor even picked up a content warmth radiating from Gabriel, much different than the heat he gave off from being imbued with God’s power. It was the warmth of peace, of acceptance. Gabriel was not afraid of death.
“Machine, once again, thank you for everything. May your days be many, and your woes few.”
And just like, the archangel was a husk.
V1 stood alone in the destruction it had created. Its yellow lens continued to shine on Gabriel even as his corpse refused to move. How was it supposed to function without a source of blood? How was it supposed to keep its battle skills sharp without a passionate rival to duel against? How was it supposed to find a new purpose without a companion to guide the way? It was at that moment that V1’s processor finally slowed to a normal pace as a rational idea imbedded itself into its programming. Carefully, it reached behind itself to the bloodied hole where its left wing had blown off and cupped its hands together. When it gathered as much of the red substance as it could, it dragged itself over to the angel’s body and poured the blood over the few parts which were not obscured by the black cloth. It wasn’t much, but it should have been enough to get Gabriel’s core to restart.
The blood did not seep into his body. Gabriel did not wake up.
Of course. Angels were holy beings, they likely needed much more fluid than a robot like itself did. Twisting its arms back in their metallic sockets again, V1 drew more blood from its own form and slathered it over Gabriel’s own. It would need to find a way to generate more blood later so that they could both function, but at the moment, its hard drive kept spitting out a single line of code:
Restore him.
V1’s low fuel alert did not even sound until its body was already parallel to the ground. Its left hand was still slick with blood and resting on Gabriel’s exposed forearm (the fabric had ripped in their fight against God). It could not comprehend why the angel wasn’t powering back on. It could not survive without at least one other creature present, whether that creature be standing against it, or beside it. It needed Gabriel back.
The whirls of the mechanics inside of its body began to still. First, its vision sensor cut to black. Next, its ability to control its limbs failed to function. Then, its right wing gave out, resulting in another explosion that its glitched audio sensor could not register. Finally, the last of its power drained from its CPU, and it became innanimant once more.
Take care.