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wayward-idiots · 6 years

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The Apology of Gabriel, pt14

If you’re looking for remorse, look no further than literally anywhere but this. It’s not that kind of apology.

Characters: Sam, Gabriel Pairings: Ambiguous/Gen Summary: Black swans, Willy Wonka references, and a study in dissonance.

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[Note: not only are black swans an example of the symbolism throughout Gabriel’s dreamscape creations, but it’s kind of an oblique reference to the Sam/Gabriel fanfic Black Swans. This fic continues to be ambiguously gen, in that I fully expect some of you to read it as sabriel, while also not intending to turn this into an expressly sabriel fanfic. I just wanted to give due credit to the writers who made me think of Sam as a black swan in the first place.]

Sam is on a swan boat, painted solid black, and it's pedaling itself. Gabriel is sitting on the front with an arm looped around the neck, fingers skimming in the water.

"So," he says, "how often does that happen?"

"What?" Sam feels like he's just dropped into the middle of a conversation Gabriel's been having with himself.

"Nightmares about Lucifer."

"Oh. Well. Not as often as they used to? Cass actually took a bunch of the trauma into himself. Really messed him up for a while."

"But you're the one who's still got nightmares."

Sam shrugs it off as best he can. "Life like mine? Bound to be nightmares."

"And here you want me to shack up and join you idiots."

He considers this. "No," he says.

"What?"

"I don't want you to join us. Not because I don't like you," he hastens to add.

"Okay, now I have to hear your twisted Winchester logic, because that's the only reason you should have not to want me to join you."

"I want my family to live," Sam says, "but you were right, we never ask at what cost. And after all the misery, all the work we put into just keeping our heads above water, just for one more chance at a glimpse of happiness. The only thing that makes it worth it, aside from my family, is saving people. We've lost sight of that somewhere along the road, when it became life-or-death all the time. That was always what I clung to, when I was at my lowest. People. That I was redeeming myself through saving everyone I could, even though I couldn't save everyone."

"Don't forget," says Gabriel, "I'm one of the monsters you hunted."

"I haven't been seeing much poetic justice in the obits," Sam says.

"So you checked."

"I was trying to gauge your recovery, actually," Sam lets out a little laugh at that. "Based on whether you were back to creating weird news stories."

"You were tracking the wrong thing," says Gabriel.

"Oh?"

"You should've been looking at the release records for psychiatric inpatient facilities."

Sam smiles. "Pornstars."

"My gift to porn, for all it's done for me: some of its greatest stars back," Gabriel says.

He takes a deep breath, and: "I don't want you to join us because if you do, you die. We're cursed. And I'm selfish enough to want at least one person to get out alive."

Gabriel stares at him with all the intensity of an ancient being, an ancient being who can and has stared down to Sam's very atoms, has sifted through his memories and heard his prayers and walked in his dreams, and still looks at him like he's a math problem he can't begin to solve. Sam's perversely glad that he's still able to annoy angels simply by existing.

But what Gabriel says is, "How can you stand to even look at Jack? At me? At Castiel?"

"What do you mean?"

"His son, his brothers – how can you stand any of us?"

"Jack is nothing like Lucifer," Sam says hotly, "and neither are you and Cass. We're not defined by what our families have done. Sins aren't – commutable to nearest relative. Lucifer is Lucifer, the rest of you… you're your own people."

"But you blame yourself for what Azazel did. For what Lucifer did."

"Because they did it because of me," he says. "Because they wanted to use me."

"Then they did it for themselves. Not for you. You were just a victim of Lucifer's bullshit."

Sam swallows. "I don't like that word."

"Victim?"

"Yeah."

"Thought that was the usual word for whatever poor sap that runs afoul of monsters, for hunters." He can hear it in Gabriel's voice that he's still counting himself among the monsters.

Sam wonders where the divide is, in Gabriel's head, between Trickster and angel, or if he's counting angels as just another rmonster. In a way they sort of are, to the Winchesters.

"For civilians," Sam corrects. "I'm a hunter." And a monster, he doesn't say.

Gabriel cocks an eyebrow. "So whatever happens to you is your fault for getting in the monster's way."

"I didn't say that."

"Dad's sake, kid," says Gabriel, shaking his head. "And I thought I was messed up. How do you function under the weight of that cognitive dissonance?"

Sam considers the absolute surrealism of talking about this on a swan boat while it gently rows itself down a picturesque, twisting river. Dissonance indeed. Rather than trying to actually face Gabriel's question head-on, he says, "Why are you bringing all this up now?"

"Because even I can see the mounting urgency," he says. "Because you're hurtling towards whatever stunt you can pull out of your asses in a misguided attempt to save the world THIS time. You're running out of nows for me to bring things up, Sam."

"We still don't have a plan."

"So it's T-minus how long until your brother decides to go in guns blazing with no plan?"

Sam winces. He gives it four days, max.

A tunnel looms up ahead of them.

"I know you don't want to actually join us," says Sam, "but if there's anything – any idea – that could help us. Like the rings. I know that's too much to ask as it is, but. We're spinning our wheels here."

"The danger must be growing," Gabriel sings softly. Strange lights, with no real origin Sam can see, are playing across his face.

"What?"

"Are the fires of Hell a-glowing? Is the grisly reaper mowing?"

Sam sighs. Leans back in his seat. He's pretty sure real swan boats aren't this roomy. But then, a real swan boat probably would tip, with both of them on the same side of the boat, and Gabriel sitting on the swan's shoulder instead of inside the damn thing. "There's no earthly way of knowing," he replies.

Gabriel's grin gets swallowed up by the dark of the tunnel like the Cheshire Cat, and Sam wakes up.

There's a Wonka Bar on his bedside table.

Inside is a golden ticket that just says, ONE WAY ANGEL AIR FARE TO ARUBA, FOR USE IN CASE OF DUMB PLANS.

Sam is pretty sure they've hit a new, sort-of-unspoken agreement wherein if Sam tries to ask Gabriel for help, Gabriel goes back to trying to convince him to bail.

"Sorry," he says to the empty room, "I just had to ask—"

A cascade of travel brochures pelt his head.

"I got it, I got it, no more asking for help."

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#the apology of gabriel #taog pt13 #my content #who let me have a blog anyway #.txt #aline writes spn fic #ugggggh i'm not crazy about this one but the boys just would not behave #i'll try to get caught up by posting 15 and 16 tomorrow #16 is already written i just need to finish 15

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