Work Text:
Few words pass between them. Not that there’s a really a “between” in their conversations, to be honest. He speaks, they listen, they make a mechanical noise or a gesture here and there, he understands well enough. It’s an arrangement that usually works, given Gabriel doesn’t ask them something requiring more than their equivalent of a few words.
To his credit, he’s gotten good at it.
A haze of fog has collected somewhere far below their feet, obscuring the folded, ruined legs of the Earthmover they sit on. This layer of Hell has been quiet ever since they killed these towering machines, bringing an end to the perpetual fight between them put on for the amusement of Hell itself.
What does this evoke to them? This stillness, this war-torn landscape bathed in darkness and fog, whose sky is no longer dotted with the ever-changing constellations of distant gunfire– this should bring about some kind of feeling in them.
Perhaps it would if they were more human.
“Mankind always had a certain ingenuity when it came to feeding their propensity for war,” Gabriel murmurs, breaking the long silence.
V1 doesn’t respond. Gabriel knows it’s always listening to him. They have little else to listen to, after all.
“I often wonder where they would have been by now if they didn’t spend so much effort on… this ,” he continues, tapping his heel against the dirtied metal of the Earthmover’s corpse. “Perhaps they could have eradicated diseases. Reached out to touch the stars. Built something… I don’t know, beautiful again.” He glances at them. “They used to make art, you know. Grand paintings and sculptures, beautiful cathedrals. Peace can be a wonderful thing for artists. Strife can work its own wonders on the creative types, of course, but… imagine the testaments to their abilities they could have left behind. Instead all that they’ve left is…” Another tap of his heel.
Peace? V1 wouldn’t know anything of the peace Gabriel speaks of. They were born into, born for, born to end war. The only peace they ever knew of was that of a world whose inhabitants– fuel sources– were all gone. The circumstances of the “peace” V1 knows are a little blurry. Perhaps in some respects, they understand humanity’s hunger for conflict.
They glance down at his foot, bathing his armor in a warm glow. Even after everything, he still has kind regards for the human race. V1 wants to say there’s a naivety to that sensibility, but it knows that Gabriel has been around for far, far longer than they have. He certainly has a better understanding of the breadth of human existence than they do.
“...then again, without all of their warmongering, you wouldn’t have been made,” Gabriel adds softly. “So I suppose I cannot be too disappointed in them.” There’s something that sounds like a smile in his voice. “Even if my colleagues above always expressed such disdain over mankind’s lack of worship for the heavens towards the end.”
Worship for the heavens– cathedrals, art, things awash in religious iconography. V1 thinks of the stained glass in Limbo, of the depictions of heavenly angels, of Gabriel. They think of the testaments of worship Gabriel says the humans made on Earth ages ago, the years spent building and carving and painting– of the regards for angels, those messengers of the heavens, those harbingers of salvation. The thought of something warm called sunlight streaming through the colored glass, illuminating golden halos, breathing life to golden wings–
Their wings twitch. A harbinger of salvation. A machine meant to end the Great War.
Are they not an echo of mankind’s love for the angels?
“What is it?” Gabriel asks, the subtle clicking of their wings not escaping his notice.
V1 looks at his face– an approximation of eye contact– before looking away, shaking their head slightly. Had they a voice, they could explain to him that perhaps the heavens simply weren’t looking in the right places for mankind’s expressions of worship. But communicating such an idea requires more words than they could possibly convey in their limited, rudimentary gestures.
There’s something to be considered there, V1 thinks, in humanity making their mechanical angel mute.