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In the heart of Gluttony stands an angel. Wings drawn back, tucked against the sides of cool metal. Light flutters beneath his feathers, radiant with the will of God, and falls to the floor with the crusted red of his own blood. Angels are not meant to bleed, are not meant to feel the point of a bullet against their skin. Yet Gabriel has, twice.
Anger used to bleed like the red between his teeth, a foul taste pooling metallic on his tongue. Now, his heart thrums a steady, dull beat of acceptance. He stands in the very spot he’d first been bested and thinks how so much has changed in such a small amount of time. His gums ache from how his teeth grind together, wearing the enamel thin.
A machine runs rampant through Hell, and Gabriel can do nothing to stop them.
Thick integration wraps thin fingers around his neck and squeezes. He doesn’t claw at them, lets them melt away like sand until they’re through. His armor is heavier than it’s meant to be, weighing his shoulders and slouching his once perfect posture. All because of an object. He’s bitter, but not resentful. The taste of his own blood has calmed him.
The desecrating whir of servos hums behind him, a pistol aimed at his head. Gabriel turns and looks at the machine behind the visor of his helmet. They flip a coin in their palm, twisted between their fingers like a toll, before snagging it from the air. When they see Gabriel, how he makes no move for his blades, they lower the gun.
They don’t speak; never have. Their optic glows in the dull room, sliding down Gabriel’s form, viewing his blood crusted armor, once pure white like his soul. Their weapon is holstered back against their metal side and they step forward on robotic limbs. Gabriel can do nothing to stop them, watching with a blankness unbecoming of the Apostle of Hate as they approach, stopping at his feet. He can see the thin wires between the robot’s limbs, snaking between greased hinges and motors and disappearing back into the shell of their body.
“Come to mock my defeat?” he asks with a scoff forced from his chest, fabricated like the emotion behind the machine’s eye as their head twists at an angle not capable of a human. Gabriel has to remind himself that they are a far cry from humanity; they feast on it, after all. You cannot humanize a murderous robot, even if they seem to feel in every sense of the word, save for the one that matters.
The robot stares, unblinking, and Gabriel considers if they’re even capable of thought in the traditional sense, or if strings of binary run through their motherboard to determine their next move. It’s a mystery, especially how something so inorganic hesitates like they have a soul and places a tentative hand on the shoulder of Gabriel’s armor.
He stiffens beneath the touch, but he can’t bring himself to stop them. There must be something truly wrong with him, how he watches in simple acknowledgement. They could hurt him. Kill him even, if they’re quick enough to draw their guns. But he knows they won’t. Or rather, he trusts they won’t, and he can only laugh in pitiful reverence at how easily he’s fallen into a sense of safety in trusting the enemy.
And this enemy, this machine, has woven themself beneath the protective metal of his armor and found themself a home beneath his skin. V1, he knows they’re called (for it is written across their chassis), but old habits die like the civilians of Hell, and it’s hard to put a name to something that barely has a face. He tries anyway, because he’s sick of lamenting about a faux foe.
Their other hand—the real one, not forged from stolen parts—reaches to the hatch in their chest, pressing metal fingers against a series of hidden buttons. In a rigid, fleeting moment, edges against the toiling of his heart beneath his chest, he notices neither are armed. Just a small, tranquil speck in time, that Gabriel is not ready for a fight. And neither is the enemy. He could die, or they could die, with a swift strike. That thought terrifies Gabriel for a reason he refuses to face.
A soft click snaps Gabriel’s gaze back to V1, and softly, a melody begins to play from them. It isn’t the first time he’s heard them play music; they’re always accompanied by heavy, hard melodies when they face him. But this tune is sweeter, tinged with a slow, melancholy base that drifts into the air of Gluttony with something that simmers in warmth and stringed instruments. Gabriel doesn’t know how to respond, so he doesn’t. His eyes bore into the machine as they take a step back, bow like their successor, and hold out a hand to him.
They didn’t come here with the attention of a fight, but a dance, and the realization burns something cold into Gabriel.
“You aren’t serious,” he says once he finds his voice, staring at the robot’s hand before him warily. V1 doesn’t move an inch, optic wide and bright enough that Gabriel can’t look into it without staining his vision with painful spots of blue. His fingers twitch at his side, flexing his gloved fists. Nothing good can come from this, it’s downright foolish, it could be a trap. His mind screams for him not to trust them, it’s idiotic to accept.
Gabriel places his hand in theirs.
He’s unsure if this robot even possesses the ability to dance, but he allows them to put their hand on his waist, threading their fingers through his. He shouldn’t be entertaining this. Or, at the very least, should insist upon leading. He weeps stupidity and places his hand on V1’s shoulder, cold beneath the skin of his fingers.
There’s nothing slow about their movement. With the fervor of a machine programmed for speed, their hand flexes around Gabriel’s skin and guides him into step with the music. It’s robotic; of course it is. There’s no sway to the dance, programmed perfection with each step against Gluttony’s floor, and yet it’s so them that Gabriel can’t mind it. It catches him off guard, how easily he falls into the stiff steps, flaring his wings and letting them flutter with the soft twists and turns.
It isn’t unlike a fight, the practiced back and forth, movement accompanied by a partner. Beloved or beloathed, it’s a melody of twisted blades and bullets and slow, somber piano keys touched like a lover. The dance, the fight, and the song collide into an atomic maelstrom, and Gabriel watches the fallout like it will save him.
The music swells into a peak of low strings and electronic buzzes that set it apart from any song he’s heard before. Gabriel’s brow furrows beneath his helmet and he’s spun like a dream, drifty and hazy in a symphony of death. It’s distracting enough that he misses V1’s wings spreading behind them, glowing low in the dimness. They twist Gabriel into a dip and his hands clench, squeezing the metal between his fingers.
Then, their wings push against the air and they catapult themself up in the sky. Gabriel is pulled harshly with them. He nearly falls, nearly places his weight into their hands, before his wings spread and he catches himself, floating in the air, in the arms of his enemy. They can’t laugh, but the beeps emitted from their chassis makes Gabriel feel as though he’s being mocked.
It’s enough to guide the rash surge of energy beneath his being, his hands leaving the machine momentarily to place them on their robotic hips. Their surprise is evident in how they pause, their hands falling loose, and Gabriel takes this to his advantage, whipping them around in turn in the sky. Their hands find his shoulderpads, optic wide and unblinking as ever, yet he can feel their trepidation, so utterly human in their reaction that he almost forgets everything but their face.
It makes him almost wonder, if he were to lift his helm, what the metal would feel like against his lips. But that’s too far, so he locks the idea away into the furthest corner of his mind. You can’t kiss a machine.
He doesn’t allow them to recover, too scared of letting himself think through what he’s doing. Utterly foolish; he’ll surely berate himself over this for months to come. But he forgets about everything else, if only to live in the moment and spin V1 around until their processors are dizzy like organic emotion.
Gabriel’s fingers dig into steel, not painful because he can’t hurt something mechanical. He considers the being in his grasp, the wires and inner workings under his hands that could be so easily severed. They look at him without expression, and yet he can read something bleeding trust in their light. It’s nauseating yet, in the moment, exhilarating, to have such power over them but not want to use it.
The music falls into something somber, a reflection beneath waves of instruments, and he wants to tear out their speakers just as much as he wants to embrace them fully. It’s conflicting, warring beneath him, and Gabriel spirals in the crossfire.
He swings them together in an arch through the air to push the unwanted notions from his mind, beating his wings to lift them higher before mimicking V1’s earlier move and dipping them. They bend like a machine, snapping in half with a hiss of joints. Their wings flare, head twisted back to reveal the spindly rod of their neck, and in a frozen second of vulnerability, Gabriel’s hands loosen.
He awakens from his senseless daze and lets go.
V1 drops with the grace of Icarus into the ocean, swallowed by a sea of orchestral bliss. They twist, fanning their wings like a parachute behind them and drift back to the ground. Metal joints pop with their weight as they land on their feet, looking up at the angel descending down onto the floor of Hell like he didn’t share a dance of sweet awakening with them.
The music stops, drawn out on a lingering cello note that hangs like a knife between them. Gabriel’s feet land beside them, glowing holy light into the belly of Gluttony’s beast. He clears his throat, the picture of the righteous hand of the Father, but doesn’t speak. V1 interrupts him—as much as they can, with a wave and a low beep.
Beneath his mask, Gabriel’s eyebrows raise. “Pardon?” he asks, squinting wary eyes. They crook their fingers towards themself before turning and taking off back into the sky, towards the exit of Gluttony, with a universal “follow me” that Gabriel understands. He’s sure they won’t listen if he calls after them, so he doesn’t, following like a pathetic mutt at beck and call, out of the circle of Gluttony and up.
He doesn’t expect to be invited back to V1’s place.
Never has he felt more out of sync with the world. It’s whiplash—not the arm variety—going from a melancholy dance to a homely domesticity. His lips draw taught beneath the heavy helmet of his face. He watches, awkward and stiff, as the robot flits through the small kitchen of an old, abandoned Lust building. It’s such a stark contrast, how a machine rooted in violence makes no attack. It sickens him. After all, every meeting with them has ended the same. A vicious cycle meant to repeat, and yet he goes insane trying to change the result.
Their wings are tucked back against their metal frame, bleeding ochre into the dim apartment they’d taken to. It’s desolate, save for a few weapons and a full piggy bank, yet…homely, in the way it reflects so wholly them, shiny and clean much like V1 themself.
Gabriel digresses. He burns in nervous hatred; why should he be nervous? He’s above this machine, a construct of living, organic material that V1 so inarguably isn’t, yet he feels as though he’s invading a private moment despite being invited into it with tentative peace.
“Machine,” he clears his throat, metal boots loud in the quiet kitchen as he steps forward. Something drives him, beneath the cage of armor and ribs, to uneasiness. “You do understand that cooking is pointless, yes?” His arms cross, fingers flexing. His armor traps the heat of his skin.
V1 doesn’t reply—they never speak. But they emit a low beep that pitches up in question when they face Gabriel for the first time since he was let in. A sigh is breathed into Lust’s thick air and Gabriel considers how else he could spend the evening instead of standing in the middle of a muddied, broken kitchen with Hell’s greatest foe. But his job comes secondary to the suffocating curiosity drowning his lungs, so he stays and watches the poor robot attempt cooking in a kitchen without working appliances.
“I don’t require food. Nor do you,” he informs them, in case they’ve somehow forgotten. His toe taps against the tiled floor. “Where did you even obtain these ingredients? Gluttony?”
An affirmative beep and a nod is his only reply. Gabriel doesn’t think about how he’d been so engulfed in the small moment together that he hadn’t noticed them gathering food. But then, he had so much to reflect upon that the music and insecurity blinded him.
Though to call V1 a chef would be an insult to anything capable of even basic culinary skills. They wield a knife with the practice of a machine, but the gentle rocking motion of the blade is strangled, something not programmed into their being and therefore not mechanical. The way the onion they cleave in half is lopsided and then chopped into simultaneous too-thin and too-thick cubes is so remotely human that Gabriel can only stare in astonishment. They manage to spill half the chopped vegetables when transferring them into a rusted pot, and they stop.
He doesn’t understand the sudden pause to their movements until he notices their hand on the dial of the burner, twisted to operate it. The appliance does not ignite; doesn’t seem to be emitting any gas either, from what Gabriel can tell, and he almost laughs in their face at the notion of them believing the decades old thing would work.
(Briefly, he wonders if they’re trying an alternative fuel source, something else organic that may provide subsistence like it would a mortal. He wonders if they mistake themself for human, sometimes. He knows he does.)
Nothing in Lust has worked in years, because nothing in Lust has been prosperous in years, fed to the starvation of the Reniscience like it would cure the drought. It did not, and now Lust’s people line the streets as rotting, bloodless corpses. It isn’t Gabriel’s fault, of course; not this, at least. He tried to stop the machine’s rampage, after all—twice. It isn’t his fault that half of Hell is dead. It isn’t.
The fruitlessly domestic tranquility V1 has forced them into rears its ugly reality and Gabriel tenses in frustration, not only at the machine but himself. He should have terminated the sticky fondness in his chest the moment it arose, and now it has grown veins in his heart and he can do nothing to cut them apart. But he can still draw his blade on the being before him, a snarl hidden beneath his helmet.
“Enough of this, Machine,” he booms, loud in the quiet of the small room. The machine jumps, visibly startled, optic wide. It takes not even half a second for them to recognize what’s happening and raise their guard. They don’t yet draw their weapons, but Gabriel watches with clenched teeth as their wings flare. Their hand reaches for their guns as Justice and Spendor are unsheathed.
Gabriel swings first.
A hard metal arm comes up to block the wide arch of his sword. It sounds a loud, grating clang that sparks heat into the air. A railcannon is aimed at Gabriel’s skull in the next second, the blast ricocheting off the base of his helmet and he turns his head, crossing his arms in front of him to stop their knuckle blaster from striking his chest. The impact on his forearms makes him hiss, pushing the robot away as his wings spread.
V1 stares at him for a moment, analyzing, optic shrinking and head twitching, before they drop their weapons onto the floor. It’s enough to make Gabriel pause, eyebrows furrowed, as he watches them disarm themself. He knows better than to underestimate them; they could probably defeat him with only the knuckle blaster, were they determined enough. But something about keeping the fight fair makes his fists clench around his blades.
“Strange being,” he grits out, sheathing his swords and grinning. His hands flex, itching for the feeling of hard metal bruising his knuckles. He motions them forward with his feet planted firmly on the old apartment floor, and the fight begins again.
They are quicker to strike, zipping forward to land the first blow against his shoulder, aimed between the plating of his armor. It doesn’t hurt much, but it’s enough to send him staggering back. They use his momentary disorientation to their advantage, coming back under him and striking his jaw beneath his helm, metal against onyx skin. His teeth bite into his tongue, piercing him. Gabriel lets out something similar to a growl, pushing the machine away with both arms and spreading his wings, bending them in front of him to shield him when they try to hit again. He spits blood into his helmet, smearing it across the inside and letting it drip down beneath the edge, falling down his chin and pooling in the creases in his clavicle and armor.
V1’s optic zeros in on the liquid fuel, and Gabriel rushes them in their distraction, skin and iron against hard steel. His knuckles split and leak blood onto their chassis, which is greedily absorbed into their casing. He snarls at them, raising another hand towards the wires around their spindly neck. They manage to catch his fist, pushing their weight against him and turning to knock him off balance. Gabriel stumbles, wings flaring, but it's enough for V1 to kick the backs of his knees, sending him to the floor.
He doesn’t go down easily. Gabriel vanishes in a blur of blue and gold and reappears behind them, grabbing the base of their wing and yanking as his feet thud onto the floor. They spark, spinning to strike him against his helmet and force him to let go. His hands release the wing, but not without him noticing the loose cables and bent metal left behind. It sends a thrill through him, being strong enough to do damage with his bare hands to man’s perfect war machine.
In artificial anger, the machine jumps him, their smaller form latching onto him and wrapping gangly legs around him to keep them in place. Their whiplash grips his arm—a completely unfair move, in Gabriel’s opinion—and they strike his face again, bruising his cheek against the harsh interior of his helmet. Gabriel fights them off, trying to unlatch metal limbs from his waist while pushing against them, blocking their punches to his jaw before they manage to break it. He knocks them into the wall, hoping to dent their frame as they slam against bricks and drywall, leaving behind the evidence of the fight. He seethes, shoving them with all his force, but they hold fast, glued onto him and struggling to keep him under control.
Gabriel hadn’t realized how close he’d stumbled to the window until he feels cold glass against the back of his neck, bumping into the fragile wall of purple lights, bathing them in Lust’s neon glow. He pauses, attempting to step forward and away, but V1’s anger leads to a punch thrown at the side of his head. Gabriel moves his neck to evade, but their fist goes straight through the window behind them. It shatters on impact, and the force of the strike sends them both tumbling out the other side, falling from the top floor of Lust’s city skyline.
V1 isn’t heavy, but they fight him the entire way down, hanging on even as Gabriel’s wings unfurl and catch them both. His wings are, however, not made to hold so much extra weight, and their descent is only slowed. They still slam into the pavement below, kicking up a cloud of dust. The ground beneath Gabriel spins, though he’s finally rid of the machine clinging to him, if only so he didn’t land on top of them. His head hits the ground hard, and he’s half convinced he’s added a concussion onto the long list of injuries he’s endured in the past few minutes.
While prone on his back, a thin foot stomps down onto his breastplate, pushing their weight into it. They aren’t heavy enough to damage him, but a thing of wires and steel isn’t light. His hands immediately wrap around the base of their ankle, pushing against the robotic calf. Expressionless, they gaze down at him. Backlit like the halo of an angel, light dying behind their head, they aim finger guns at Gabriel and mime shooting. Something akin to amusement twitches their shoulders and they release him, setting their foot back onto solid ground.
They make the mistake of thinking the fight is over. Gabriel rolls onto his stomach, latching onto their leg and yanking their foot out from under them. They beep loudly, bent wings buzzing in an attempt to catch themself, but they stagger to the cracked road under them. Gabriel disappears from the floor in a flash, reappearing in front of them to knee them in what would be their jaw, had they any bones. They jump to their feet, a quick and nimble feature of their design, give him a long look, and dash down the street.
Gabriel smiles behind his helmet and flies after them.
The open air sifts between the feathers of his wings, shivers of cold slipping up to his spine beneath the warm caste of metal around him. He soars high, taking to the skies that they’ve been rejected from with their faulty wing, and dives down like a hawk, hands outreached for them. V1 ducks, beeping wildly at him as they roll beneath his arch, a swinging parabola that misses them by an inch before he’s back in the air.
But the abundance of space lends itself to his teleportation, allowing him to flash in and out of reality with a spark, showing up behind them with an unfair advantage to kick the metal casing of their back. They don’t fall, their wings spreading to take the brunt of the attack. He dents the lower left one, sparks emitting from frayed wiring that nearly burns him. Gabriel laughs despite it, power floating beneath the surface of his pride, stretched out like a lazy cat, content and arrogant.
It allows V1 a moment of reprise. They fold their bent wings into themself, righting their posture into a proper fighting stance, before raising their arm.
Ugly, venomous green wraps around his forearm, yanking him forward. Gabriel’s boots skid against the gravel, pulled towards V1. With a grunt, he grabs the wire of the whiplash, all too aware of what the machine could be capable of with it. He winces as metal spikes pierce his skin like rose thorns, but he holds tight on the wire and jerks his arm back, snapping the rope in two. It falls from his gauntlet and onto the ground like a dead snake.
Red contrasts the green in an intense show of opposite colors, dripping from his skin. The machine’s optic zeroes in on the fuel, rushing him immediately. Gabriel scoffs at their desperation, sidestepping them. They immediately spin, landing a punch against his exposed clavicle. A sickening snap of pain, sharp and electric, makes him cry out, free hand grabbing the bone as though to wrench it back into place. The machine pauses, running a near delicate hand across his injury and down his arm, brushing against blood and skin and smearing the metal red. Gabriel’s gasping breath hitches, stops like a stuck cog in a machine, before he forces it out in a huff, watching the thing absorb his life force to fuel their own.
His hand shoots out, grabbing the wrist of their green arm just as the rest of his blood disappears into them. With a furious grip, he yanks. Metal screeches and snaps, giving way, and despite the electronic noises V1 emits with a wide eye, Gabriel snaps the last of the struggling cords connecting the arm to their body and throws it down onto the ground beside the rest of the whiplash. V1 stares for less than a second, halting, systems processing the loss of something that doesn’t even belong to them. Gabriel bares his teeth and hits them with the thick back of his gauntlet, causing them to stumble in their momentary distraction.
They fall to their knees, scraping the bloodied sidewalk beneath them, and Gabriel moves to kill. He appears before them, raising a heavy foot down onto their chest and leaning his weight against them. Their three remaining hands immediately wrap around his ankle, grip tight and bending into the armor, but Gabriel doesn’t budge. They don’t have enough leverage in this position to lift him off, and he leans his arm onto his knee, sneering up over them with labored breath.
Laid prone on their back, V1 can only stare up into Gabriel’s eyes. Their optic glows bright, near blinding, but the angel doesn’t look away. He glares down at them, pushing more weight into them until their legs give a fruitless kick under them. He could kill them right here. Hell’s greatest enemy, their reign ended at the hand—not even blade—of Gabriel. He could reach out, grab their head in his palm and rip it off their thin neck. He could stomp on their faux face until it's nothing but shattered glass and marred metal. He could tear them apart, limb by limb, until they’re incapable of killing another being, then leave them to starve without any source of fuel.
Gabriel’s pin weakens. He could; should, even, to save the denizens of Hell and the rulers of Heaven. And yet, he finds hesitation bleeding him out like a leech, hanging to him and gnawing into his flesh. His weight against them lessens, the force upon V1 dwindling, and their optics blinks once, twice at him, before carefully pressing against his foot, as though scared of spooking him.
And Gabriel lets them. He doesn’t know what compels him to, but he allows them to push away his boot, allow them to slide out beneath him and stand onto their feet again, wings sparking and twitching, scraped up from the concrete.
He falls to his knees, hands trembling before his vision. His teeth clench, breath shaking, and he lets out a terrible, reedy laugh. “I– I cannot do it.” He clenches his fists, wings falling to his side. “I can’t kill you.” His shoulders shake, reeling with laughter that forces itself from his throat unbidden. Why is he laughing? V1 stares at him blankly, unnervingly.
“Machine,” he says, blinking hard and gasping to get air into his lungs, “Death– Hah, death doesn’t begin to describe the divine retribution you deserve.” He shakes his head, looking up from the ground to them, vision wavering and clouding with the burn of his eyes. He speaks through breathless laughter. “Hell can’t hold you hostage, but you don’t deserve the release of nothingness.” A pause, a breath, and Gabriel smiles. “…There is nothing I can do to win against you, is there? You may kill hundreds more, but it would only be a mercy to those damned for their sin. I cannot win.”
The gold of his shoulder pads clink against his breastplate as they shake, jostled by the rapid rise and fall of his chest, the frantic peels of manic cry-laughing escaping his bitten lips. V1’s broken wings jerk, sparking with a sense of guilt—though Gabriel may just be humanizing an object again. They don’t interrupt him; can’t really. They’re still, silent, optic wide and attentive. He feels like a panicked animal, on display, and it makes him quake harder with such human emotion he wants to retch.
“How could I be so foolish as to think that anything I do matters?” he sputters out through the bile rising in his throat, choked down by a sob. “…Does any of it matter? The Heavenly Council would’ve replaced me, should I have failed. Or will replace me. There will always be a successor, right?” He watches the machine’s head look away, back at the blood and gore lining the purpled streets, then down to the red arm attached to their torso. “If you want to kill me, do it. I won’t fight you anymore.” His hand falls to the sheath of Splendor, pulling it into Lust’s air with an unsteady hand.
He drops his sword at the feet of apathy.
“Only death may release us from the massacre of God’s absence,” he says with a grimace, lips twisted into a snarl as though the words don’t hold truth. V1 looks downward at the pathetic display of him falling to his knees on the heavy earth and groveling at their feet. He refuses to look at them. “It won’t matter. I’ll be dead before dawn, without His Holy light. If I’m going to die, I’d rather it be by your hand. A valiant way to go, wouldn’t you agree?”
He doesn’t expect V1 to do much of anything. They don’t seem the type to take him up on it; they would kill him in a flash of bullet rain and clashing of his swords, not him begging pitifully for it. It surprises him when they step forward, reaching out a jointed hand. It’s the hand of a savior, salvation holding out for him and hoisting him up. Except, his salvation is a sadistic robot that doesn’t grip him like a gentle savior. He’s grabbed by the front of his breastplate, the armor bending beneath their strength as they use the leverage to pull him up to his feet with remarkable strength for something so much smaller than him.
He cannot back away from this fate even if he wishes to—which he doesn’t. They stare deep into his eyes, through him like a glass mirror and deep into his soul. He isn’t sure what a machine sees in him, if this is divine judgement from the benefactor of Hell, but he accepts them openly. Though their strength makes escape impossible, his legs bend to keep upright, too tall to stand squarely on his feet with the angle of their hand. They show no mercy for the twinge in his muscles, not that he deserves such.
The repressed portion of his brain, years upon years twisted down into the deepest cellar of his mind, preens at the sheer strength they exert over him, the idea of nothing stopping a machine from carrying out its function making his wings flutter. It drives a molten metal through the thicket of his lungs, dripping over the Heavenly heart beating beneath his rib cage and engulfing it in liquid sin. The fire is inextinguishable, but he pretends the cold douse of reality in the form of V1 shoving him closer works as intended.
A grunt escapes him at the force behind such a machine, gears and motors that would sooner rip an arm from their socket than let go. Gabriel’s hands find V1’s, wrapping ichor stained fingers around the slim, jointed wrist. If this is his last moment, he refuses to be looked down upon like a coward. A warrior’s death at the hands of such an accomplished foe is honorable; why else would he beg them to slay him? The machine must see him as pathetic, wishing for an escape from the pure pain he’ll have to face when the Light runs out. And perhaps he is as pathetic as V1 thinks, but he holds his head high to meet their stare, refusing to bow even before his demise.
He has no God to pray to, so he prays to a lifeless machine for a quick death.
Their hand raises, bent wings flaring up like a symbol of pride. Gabriel’s breath comes shakily, fractured like his faith, and his eyes fall closed in acceptance. His life may never have been of much value to himself, but he’s happy to give it to someone like V1.
Their fist strikes the side of his face.
Gabriel gasps, dull pain thudding against his skull, the cold impact shocking his eyes open. The machine drops him, letting him fall to his knees in the middle of the deserted street, his cheek throbbing with the rush of his heartbeat, still alive and pumping its thick lifeforce throughout him. Blood drips between his lips, trailing under his jaw and down into the divot of his clavicle, pooling like fire. His enemy doesn’t even glance at the liquid fuel, their optic trained directly on Gabriel. Their gaze is hot, burning even, and he stares off to the side to avoid it.
A sharp creaking forces his head to snap back. Their fingers wrap around their upper arm, held taught in their hand. They’re pulling, the sound of metal forcing metal to tear ear piercing in the quiet of Lust, but Gabriel cannot tear away his gaze, watching with rapt attention as the red of their arm bends and dents around their fingers, ripping the arm from the socket with steady ease. Loose screws shoot off into the street, flying past the angel’s head until V1 pulls the thing free, holding their own arm in their hand. They toss it onto the ground without care, not even deigning it another look.
Gabriel watches, entranced, eyes set upon V1—truly them, their authentic form. How they arrived in Hell, without added extensions to their being. Two arms, two legs, and so utterly human that Gabriel nearly mistakes them for the silhouette of a savior. It’s lethal to humanize a machine created against God’s will, built to rain down destruction upon the suffering, and yet Gabriel’s limbs grow weak, a powerful moment of…well, it isn’t trust that bleeds from him like a free wound. But something just as secure slashes his skin like Justice, a slit to crawl into and remain inside him, venom in the stream of his blood. He doesn’t want to suck the poison out for fear of losing too much of himself in the corollary of it.
And with the mechanic visage of a savior, they hold a hand out to him, beckoning him into his fate. He may not be alive for long, but he doesn’t have to spend his last moments fighting. Especially not when his chest burns something fierce, something hot and molten like fondness dipped in Hellfire. His hand clasps against V1’s, pulling him onto shaky feet.
They embrace him, a machine wrapping around the broad shoulders of an angel, and he lets them. Melts into it like wax, his own hands shakily finding their form and holding like he loathes to let go. Dawned in metal and Gabriel’s own crusted blood, they cradle him like God never did, like he has never felt for all the soft pillowy fluff beyond Heaven’s gates. This machine, manmade, Devil spawn, is warm and gentle. There, in the street of Lust, surrounded by sin, emerges the holiness of Gabriel’s salvation.
It graces him with more tender care than the Father ever could.