by Jane Lebak
He doubled over, onto his knees and farther down so he folded like an egg, arms clutched around himself.
None of the other angels were speaking. No, why would they? He wouldn't speak up for them under the same circumstances.
He found his voice. "Forever?"
The answer, "One year."
Gabriel breathed softly, still not looking up. "I shouldn't have done it. I apologize."
No answer.
No mercy? After all he'd done, all the years he'd served? When so many other angels bent or broke the rules and God never said a thing? "Why?" he asked, and then his voice pitched up. "Why won't you answer me?"
More silence.
Gabriel blasted out of Heaven like a missile, then plummeted toward the Earth. He collided with the ground, scorching a mile-long trench through the forest and ending at the base of a mountain. He staggered to his feet and launched again, unhurt except for this spiritual blindness, this ache and emptiness and loneliness.
He misjudged the height of the mountain and slammed into a rock; he'd become tangible enough to have the wind knocked out of him. Ruah. He'd had the spirit knocked out of him too.
Sprawled on the pinnacle, the Cherub clung to the stone a long time, eyes squeezed tight, trying not to consider—or remember—what had happened. Because he knew: his own authority, his own assumptions, his decision—that wasn't right. God had ordered one thing and he'd done another. How often had he been the one to say that when God gave an order you had to carry it out? He'd dressed up disobedience as obedience, and to what end? Continued idolatry? The enslavement of a people who would rightfully blame him if they were better off dead?
"Father God." He wrapped himself tight. "What did I do?"
Tishri 1
After Michael somehow got the mess under control in Heaven, he went to Gabriel.
In the darkness, Michael adjusted his sight until he sensed the stillness enfolding the whole mountain, plus at the crown of its stillness, Gabriel huddled against a rock and staring without focus into the mountain's heart.
Michael reached for him. "Gabriel—?"
The Cherub whipped into a stand. "Go away!"
Wings raised, Michael backed up a step on the rock ledge.
"I felt you coming! Do you think I'm stupid," Gabriel's words ended in a flat, dry tone, "just because I was idiot enough to lose God's love?"
"I don't think—"
"Go home. I want Raphael." Gabriel dropped back to the rock, tucking up his knees and pulling his wings tight around himself.
"You've got me." This was horrible. Worse than horrible. Gabriel had turned colorless. All his natural strength had shattered within him, and Gabriel's name meant Strength of God. Well, no strength anymore. No God either. What was left?
Michael wrapped his arms around his waist with a shiver.
He hadn't thought about what he'd expected to find, but it wouldn't have been this. Maybe he figured Gabriel would have been crying – he'd have been crying himself, that's for sure. Or maybe Gabriel analyzing and endlessly dissecting the events leading up to the punishment and the potential pathways afterward. Michael would have sat while Gabriel gave a detailed analysis of the loss and started compiling statistics. But here instead was a Gabriel like a shell, and waiting for him to discuss the problem like a Cherub wasn't going to work. This was just like Sodom – Gabriel wouldn't reach past the shock to the logic. If he could have, Michael's help would have been redundant.
Sodom. What should he have done then that he'd regretted not doing ever since?
Michael seated himself beside Gabriel, and then carefully, he hugged him.
It was an even chance Gabriel would shove him aside, but instead Gabriel leaned into the hug, and Michael wrapped him in his wings.
Gabriel didn't shrug off the green cocoon of Michael's feathers. The stars changed position. The evening sounds changed to midnight sounds. Gabriel's grip eased, and his pulse too. And then, at some point, Michael knew he'd fled into sleep.
Even sleeping, every so often, he shuddered.
Midnight yielded to dawn, Tishri 1. And as the first sunlight cleared the horizon, Gabriel awakened.
Gabriel burst out of Michael's grasp, whipping his head around with his eyes changing focus fifteen times in ten seconds as he searched for something he couldn't see. His wings flared as his neck arched. A moment later he collapsed to all fours, choking on a gasp, radiating despair and terror. Michael moved closer, but Gabriel scrambled away. Craning his neck, Gabriel looked at the sky, then down at his hands, then turned his stunned gaze toward Michael.
Without the smoothness of yesterday's movements, Gabriel hugged his thighs to his chest, pressed his forehead against his knees, and wrapped his wings about his body like wet cellophane. And there he stayed.
Michael worked at untensing himself and sitting back against the rock.
When Gabriel's voice emerged, it came as a whisper. "One year."
Michael shivered.
Gabriel buried his face in his folded arms. "I can't do it."
Michael inched closer. "What choice do you have?"
Gabriel stayed quiet another long time. Then he said, "Is it possible to die of homesickness?"
Michael traced his fingers over Gabriel's outermost feathers. "It's never happened before."
As he lifted his wings away from Michael's touch, Gabriel closed his fingers over a handful of stones and let the dirt slide out.
Crickets chirped in a nearby bush. Gabriel glared at them, and they silenced. Some low clouds rolled in, leaving Gabriel's eyes lightless. After a while, Michael looked down in prayerful thought and extended his heart to the other angel, but his fractured spirit buckled under even gentle pressure, so Michael withdrew.
Gabriel gave a chuckle like the creaking of the moon, a laugh that moved his shoulders in small jolts that resembled sobs, only with a dry sound. "What am I going to do?"
"What else can you do?" asked Michael. "Come home and bear it as best you can."
Gabriel tucked his head. "Why do you even want me there?"
Michael said, "You didn't actually sin, did you? You just didn't carry out the orders exactly as given."
Gabriel said, "There's no difference."
"There's a huge difference." Michael leaned forward. "Intention versus mistake."
"You're talking about the distinction between orthodoxy and orthopraxy," Gabriel said, "and I'm not up to debating it now. We have God's word on it anyway. I didn't fulfill His command exactly, and I got reprimanded. Therefore you don't want me in Heaven."
"You're wrong because I thought I did." Michael frowned. "Yes, you got punished. God took the Vision. But you're still sinless, and God didn't forbid you to stay with all of us. So of course we want you home."
Gabriel tossed one of the stones away from himself, projecting a feeling Michael couldn't name.
Michael groped for something else to say. "Where else would you go?"
Gabriel tossed another pebble after the first. "I could stay here. Where better for a disgraced angel than a disgraced planet?"
Michael looked at his legs, stretched full-length. "If you think that's for the best."
"Of course I don't think that!" Gabriel hurled a shower of stones into the bushes. "But none of this is for the best. It wasn't part of the Plan. The Best is gone. Destroyed. Irretrievable."
Michael cringed. Why hadn't someone else come for Gabriel? Uriel or Saraquael or anyone else? If he'd asked, anyone would have pleaded for the chance to come. It had been him, though, him who'd just gone out and said, "I'll go get him." Rushed in yet again without knowing what to do.
Gabriel glared sullenly. "I know you're unsettled, and I apologize. Perhaps you should return."
That was a break. Michael looked up. "And you'll come with me?"
Gabriel huffed. "What's there for me?"
"The rest of us." Michael stood and offered a hand to Gabriel. "Please? I don't want to leave you here."
Gabriel took his hand, a
nd Michael flashed them home.
- + -
Before Gabriel even placed where they'd landed, Remiel rushed him and wrapped him in her arms. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry – I did everything I could, but I didn't realize. I should have done something more."
Gabriel tensed under her embrace, but she wouldn't let go. He realized Michael had brought them to a field in one of the outer layers of Heaven, not the inner circle. No, of course not – he didn't belong there anymore. "I don't blame you for anything," he told Remiel, but she buried her face in his shoulder. "It's my own fault."
He hated saying that. But that probably meant he should say it more.
"Hey, give him space to breathe." That was Saraquael, and he helped loosen Remiel's arms from around him. Then Saraquael met his eyes, and Gabriel shuddered to realize he was crying. "I'm sorry. I don't know what else to say."
Gabriel reached with his heart for Raphael, because Raphael would know what to say, and for that matter, Raphael would give him space, maybe bring him to a library and stay in the next room while Gabriel figured out what to do. But instead of sensing fire, Gabriel sensed nothing. Not a wall as much as an empty container. Avoiding him?
That made sense. No one would want to touch pain. When it didn't hurt so much, Raphael would come to him.
But the conversation was stalled, and Saraquael still had tears in his eyes, so Gabriel said, "Who has my place?"
"Dobiel," said Saraquael.
"He didn't want it." Remiel shook her head. "We wanted to keep the spot empty."
"That would be ridiculous." Gabriel realized he had his wings too tight to his body, so he struggled to relax them, to smooth down the feathers instead of fanning them out with tension. "An empty spot would be a living monument to disobedience." He bit his lip. "Is Raphael okay?"
All three looked at each other. Remiel said, "I…don't know. I could ask Raguel. Raphael took it badly, and Raguel pulled him away."
Gabriel straightened. "I didn't feel that at all."
Darkness had clouded Remiel's voice. "You were feeling a lot of other things."
Not enough. Not feeling God, for instance.
Uriel appeared and without hesitation embraced Gabriel.
Michael said, "Uriel was praying for mercy before God even said anything."
Gabriel closed his eyes. "Thank you." Too many angels here – and the one he wanted decidedly missing. "I need – Could I just have some time? To myself? I need to sort things out."
Michael looked hurt, but he left with Saraquael. Remiel took his hand. "I understand. But if you want any pointers, or if you just need to talk about it, I know it's not the same, but I might be able to help you since I went through something similar."
Before Gabriel could ask what she meant, she'd vanished too.
He turned, but Uriel had stayed, and Uriel grabbed his hands and looked him right in the eye.
God still loved him.
It came from Uriel's eyes, the curve of Uriel's spine, the relaxation of the innermost feathers on the smallest set of wings, a message sent from unmoving eyes and firm hands. God still loves you.
Gabriel pulled back, but Uriel's grip on his hands tightened, and Uriel leaned forward.
Gabriel looked himself over, smiling dryly. Uriel looked over Gabriel again and nodded.
Gabriel said, "I know what you're trying to do, but I deserved this."
Uriel embraced him, and then in words for the first time, whispered, "Don't assume you know what God's doing."
- + -
Gabriel found a quiet corner of Heaven and tried to sort through his situation. It hurt. He hadn't expected (no, of course he hadn't expected – no one could have expected this…) He wouldn't have predicted the sheer gap in his perceptions from the loss of God's light in everything. He hadn't spent every waking second staring directly into God's eyes and embracing His fullness the way Raphael had been doing at their last contact, so Gabriel would have hypothesized the loss of the Vision would mean the loss of direct communication and dry prayer sessions.
He wouldn't have hypothesized that ache every moment, like when the Sodomites pounded him in that alleyway and left his ribs hurting long into the night, and that feeling of life scorching out inside or the sudden stabbing pains with deep breaths. That was more how it felt now – less like a gap and more like a wound.
So he huddled in a niche in the rocks, trying to hash out a logical plan. He worked out the number of minutes in a year and then worked out how many minutes he'd already spent. Too many spent. Too many to go. All of them worthless without God.
After some number of minutes, Uriel flashed away, and in the next, Raguel appeared. "Hey," he said, "do you want to go on patrol with me?"
Gabriel shivered. "No, I'd rather not."
Raguel sat on a rock.
Gabriel said, "Weren't you about to go on patrol?"
"It can wait."
No, they couldn't do this – they mustn't. He was still an angel, spiritually crippled but not in need of constant tending, or were they afraid he'd disobey further and outright rebel?
Gabriel said, "Can you ask God if I have any assignments for now?"
Raguel's eyes gleamed with a light like a sword through Gabriel's heart, and as Gabriel looked away, he said, "No, you've been relieved of duties for now."
Gabriel said, "For the whole duration?"
Raguel said, "Would you like me to ask?"
And see that reflected light again? Gabriel said, "No!" He stood. "Let's go on patrol, then," and Raguel took him, looking relieved.
After patrol, Saraquael joined them, and then Raguel left while Saraquael stayed.
This was insupportable. Were they going to pass him, hand to hand, around the whole nine choirs? And was God going to withhold all assignments until this situation ended?
He tolerated it through several shift changes, waiting for Raphael to show up and put an end to this ridiculous process. Only Raphael never came, and the one time Gabriel just went to Raphael's home to look for him, the place felt devoid of Raphael's spark, and Dobiel (who trailed him at the moment) looked only uneasy.
When Dobiel left to change shifts with Saraquael after too many Godless hours, Gabriel seized the moment and vanished.
Tishri 3
Gabriel appeared in a semi-solid state somewhere north and very much west of the Holy Land. He kept his signature suppressed so the other angels couldn't find him, and he stayed insubstantial. The night was warm, so he spent the evening in a cluster of rushes by the bank of a stream.
As the stars rose, Gabriel emitted tentative streamers, touching the world surrounding him. He plunked small stones into the stream one after the next until none remained in his reach. He tucked his knees up to his chin and stared at the running water.
Raphael, he thought. And then, Michael. Remiel. Saraquael. Raguel. Uriel. Dobiel. God, God, God.
In the total silence, Gabriel closed his eyes, wrapped his wings about himself. Not raising his chin from where it rested on his knees, he breathed a song:
"How long, O Lord? Will you forget me always?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long will I cry in my soul,
Sorrow in my heart every day?
"Listen to my prayer, O Lord my God.
Enlighten me against despair.
"But I've trusted in your mercy.
Someday my heart will rejoice in your mercy.
I will sing to you always,
I know you've done what is fair."
And now, it was past time to figure out what to do with himself. Gabriel started by building a campfire because he'd seen them so often. Even if his spiritual form couldn't get cold, at least he could watch the flames.
As the fire consumed the sticks, he closed his eyes, and bracing himself, he stopped suppressing his presence.
Michael appeared, startled. "You're leaving us?"
"I'm not leaving you," Gabriel said. "I'm changing location."
Michael st
ill looked scared. He settled partway around the fire from Gabriel. "You don't need to do this. We're going to miss you."
"I already miss you," replied Gabriel. "Don't try to make me say melodramatic things. This is for the best . . . the best we can attain from here, at least."
The fire devoured wood in order to give them light. A stick crackled, and sparks ascended until they winked out.
Michael sounded tentative. "Is there anything I can bring you?"
Gabriel glowered. "You can bring me Raphael."
Michael recoiled. "You know why I can't."
Gabriel gasped just like when the men beat him in Sodom. "Oh, but God—" He put his head into his hands as his voice cracked. "But—"
He pulled his wings tight, and once again there was that urge to run accompanied by nowhere to run to. You couldn't outrun hate. Couldn't leave behind grief.
Gabriel kept his head tucked. "Please, try to explain to him. Don't let him hate me."
"I'm not sure what I can say."
Gabriel got up. The air shimmered around Gabriel as he resisted his own impulse to flash away. "I don't— Then leave. If you're as angry as he is, why are you even here?"
Michael flinched. "I'm not angry. I just don't know how much I'm allowed to tell him."
Gabriel pivoted back toward Michael. "He can't even bear to hear about me?"
Michael looked sad. "He asks about you all the time. But—" He paused. "Wait. You don't realize?"
Gabriel stared in incomprehension. He shook apart all his bits of data and pieced them back together in a different way: the presupposition had been that Raphael chose not to approach him. But what if… "God ordered him to stay away from me?" A long, long moment passed. That fit the data. It fit the emptiness whenever he reached for their bond. "And... That's why I can't feel him?"
Gabriel dropped back to a seat before the fire, and he tightened his wings around his shoulders.
Across from him, Michael radiated worry.
After another protracted pause: "God broke the rest of my bonds, too?"
Gabriel's voice cracked, and Michael leaned forward. "I don't know about all of them. But he would be here. I know he would"
