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Gabriel leaves Heaven in a rush. He’s followed by blood and screams. By the sound of Michael yelling orders at an army of unprepared fledglings, ‘because Father told me so’ as the Regent liked to put it. Lots of angels and archangels put words in Father’s mouth, lots of angels and archangels, cupids, thrones, seraphs, all the population of the Seven Heavens, talked and acted in the name of their Father.
Gabriel leaves Heaven in a rush, because of the growing army of innocent children with wings as white as snow, learning to fight before they can even fly. Gabriel leaves Heaven in a rush, blood on his hands, tears in his eyes.
He follows a path that’s not even drawn yet, slaloming between dark clouds and thunder, lightnings which have yet to be born, like a shout just asking to get out of your mouth that you swallow with difficulty ; he avoids shooting stars, drops of rain and moonlight ; he smiles, all the way down, because it’s like falling down on a never ending slide of regrets, memories and death threats.
Everything he leaves behind him.
He’s still a child, he still has so much to learn. So much he will never know.
He wonders if Raphael, up there, will notice he’s gone.
Probably not until tomorrow, when the training ends, he thinks, as the lightnings start to strike as if they want to stop him.
The nursery will be silent. The wind is howling as he flies. The babies will cry, in the middle of the night, and no one will hear. Raphy is going to get out of his office, and to call for me.
The rain pours down harder, the thunder is shouting at him to come back. No one will ever answer him.
Gabriel leaves Heaven in a rush, followed by thunderstorms and sorrow, leaving behind him the family that cared about him, and those with their minds full of screams and orders, not seeing his goodbye letter on his bed.
He imagines Michael, going to wake him up along with the other angels of his old garrison - he always considered him as a little brother, the youngest, thus condamning him to fight -.
The others will know, already. Adriel will be holding my letter, their eyes red. They will hand it to him, ashamed. As if it were their fault.
It isn’t. Gabriel has told them, already, that the only mistakes they make are the ones they do with their own hands, their own words.
Michael won’t read it aloud. But he will know, for sure.
Gabriel is crying, on his way down to Earth. He doesn’t look up, but slowly, the voices in his head are fading down. All the prayers he had to deliver to Father are slowly disappearing.
And then, halfway through a cloud, the blue planet still far away, the silence settles in his mind.
Gabriel is crying, alone on his way away from Paradise.
He glances at the stars, every minute getting closer to see them disappear too. He glances at them, and the tears and the rain are falling harder.
Lucifer will be the first to notice. But the last one to know. Because Michael won’t show him the letter. Because Raphael won’t tell him about the silence. But he will be the first to notice and to cry.
Gabriel leaves Heaven, and the moon disappears with him. Up there in the world that once was his home, the shadows run along the place, between the building, on the training field.
A brown-haired angel, six glittering wings wrapped aroung himself, is waving at the dark sky. His piercing blue eyes are shining with tears, and the night wraps around a mark on his forearm.
He’s alone, alone in Paradise.
Tonight, the moon is gone. He knows it’s falling, along with his little brother, falling down to belong to the realm of Earth.
And when Michael will finally have the courage to go and to tell him…
“Lucifer. “
A voice. The Morningstar doesn’t move, his eyes focused on the infinite void of the sky, peppered here and there by stars. For the first time in decades, the Regent places a hand on his brother’s shoulder. He isn’t threatening.
He’s grieving.
“Heaven will cry, for decades to come, the warrior that we lost.”
Tell to the fierce archangel that raised the fugitive, to a brother who helped the baby to spread his wings and to laugh at the sun and to embrace the night at his side …
“ I’m sorry, Lucifer. The moon is gone, and we never got a chance to say goodbye. No one will never understand the pain of watching the angel you raised as a kid die. “
Then my brother will just stand there and say, pride in his eyes :
“He chose to live, not to die.”