Chapter Text
Asmodeus pulled Gabriel out of his cell. He screamed and whimpered, every sound muffled by the stitches on his mouth. Asmodeus wrapped a hand around Gabriel’s throat and squeezed till something cracked and he went silent. Gabriel found himself unable to breathe properly, struggling to suck in a breath. Had his windpipe been ruptured again? Asmodeus shoved Gabriel to the floor, and he curled up, lowering his head to the floor and covering his neck with his arms as he tried to repair enough of the damage to breathe right again.
Asmodeus took him by the wrist and pulled back so hard the bone fractured.
Gabriel shrieked and choked on a sob, cringing as close to the floor as he could get. Asmodeus only laughed and knelt down beside him.
“Now now, angel,” Asmodeus chuckled, voice crackling over with ice. “I’m in need of a hit, so sit up boy.” Before giving Gabriel the chance to move, he snarled, “I said sit up,” and grabbed him by the hair, yanking his head up, and Gabriel yelped. “That’s better.”
Asmodeus pressed the needle of his grace-syringe into Gabriel’s skin, puncturing deep into his vein. Gabriel screamed as Asmodeus drew out a shining tendril of pale blue light, filling up the syringe. Giving up a portion of grace willingly never caused him any pain, he’d done it before a few times, selling a bit of angelic power for whatever he wanted at the time, but to have it forcibly sucked out burned through him in deep, bone-piercing agony. It cut through his vessel’s body and into his true form.
Luckily for his vessel, he had died many years ago, and felt none of Gabriel’s suffering.
Even though angels needed permission to take a vessel, Gabriel had felt like a parasite when his vessel died, leaving behind a hollow shell for Gabriel to hide in like a hermit crab.
From the corner of his eye, Gabriel saw a man enter the room. He looked familiar, but after enough time down here, most faces had started to look the same. Was this just another demon? His presence didn’t feel like a demon, but neither did Asmodeus’s.
The man said something to Asmodeus as he injected Gabriel’s grace into his own vein, pumping his blood full of glowing light.
Gabriel didn’t register what he said as he sat huddled, shivering, on the floor.
Asmodeus walked the man out of the room, leaving Gabriel alone. With Asmodeus gone, even just for a minute, he let himself break down, sobbing into his hands, hot tears streaking over his grimy skin. He shouldn’t have let himself cry though, because Asmodeus came right back in and sneered down at Gabriel.
“You know you’re supposed to shut up and stay shut up, boy,” he said. “And that means none of that pathetic blubbering.”
Gabriel sniffed and whimpered, swallowing a sob.
“That’s a good angel.” Asmodeus grabbed Gabriel by the shoulder in a bruising grip. He brushed Gabriel’s matted hair aside to stick the needle back into his neck. “Hold still. I want a little more.”
Dizzy from the pain, Gabriel couldn’t keep the world in focus to register what happened around him. Asmodeus shoved him back into his cell, and at some point the man came back, full of rage. Asmodeus would not respond well to rage. Gabriel curled up and tried to shut out the sounds of blows landing and blood splattering on the floor.
“Look what you did to my suit.”
Ruining that white suit never boded well. Once, Asmodeus had beaten Gabriel so brutally with enochian-carved brass knuckles, and Gabriel had ended up vomiting out thick, crimson blood, and some of it stained the suit… Gabriel ended up with several shattered bones, and then he spent the next hour forced to lick blood off the floor.
Asmodeus left, leaving the man alone in the room with Gabriel.
He had to look. Gabriel had to make sure the man wasn’t a threat. So he crawled across the cell floor and curled his fingers around the cold, warded bars and peered through.
The man, bloodied from his recent beating, groaned and stuck a finger in his mouth. He grabbed a tooth and pulled it out of his gums with a spray of blood and spat the tooth out on the floor. The man glared into the cell.
“What are you looking at?”
Gabriel flinched, but didn’t pull away. He still hadn’t come to a conclusion on if this man was a threat. Well, everyone was, but was he an immediate threat? He didn’t seem to have a weapon on him, and he had just been beaten by Asmodeus, but even the demons who served under the Prince had been on the receiving end of his wrath and they still supported him. Hadn’t this man said something about working for Asmodeus? Clearly, he didn’t fully understand what that meant, at least, didn’t understand till now.
He tried to recall the conversation between the man and the demon, but his focus had gone in and out while they spoke, and he barely managed to catch anything.
Hadn’t Asmodeus referred to the man by a name? Yes, he had. ‘Ketch.’
Unless Gabriel’s mind just invented the name. With his ears ringing and vision spotted black, he couldn’t pay much attention to conversation. But at least he could breathe again.
“If I had half your power…” Ketch said.
What power? Maybe at a different time, he might’ve laughed at that, but not any longer. Not in… how many centuries had it been? He tried to mark the passing days on the wall, but gave up after year 204. He had lost his power alongside his ability to laugh, the archangel Gabriel in name alone, with nothing to back that title up.
“In fact,” said Ketch as he stood and approached Gabriel’s cell, pulling the door open, “I think it’s time to go.”
Threat, definitely a threat, immediate threat. Gabriel whimpered and scrambled back to the corner of the cell, curling up on himself. Ketch reached down and grabbed him, hard fingers locking around his limbs.
Gabriel tried to scream, more on instinct than anything. Screaming, pleading, running, it never did anything, never saved him, and yet he just couldn’t help but react.
“Consider this a rescue.”
It could not be a rescue, not while there were hands on him. Hands would bruise, break bones, rip into his skin; this had to be some trick, some temptation, a test to see if he would run. Gabriel had tried to run before. And before that, he tried to fight. But every single time, Asmodeus stopped him, dragged him back to the cell by his hair while he thrashed and screamed and swore. If he ran now, he’d certainly be met with punishment.
His mind cycled through the tortures he’d suffered in the past. Needles slid under his fingers and into the whites of his eyes, the skin peeled off his back and a whip lashing against raw flesh, his kneecaps shattered and pulled out piece by piece, guts torn open so he could be bound and strangled by his own intestines, his feet skinned before being forced to walk across burning glass shards, his mouth sewn shut when Asmodeus finally tired of Gabriel’s constant whining… The fragments of his grace always prevented his death, but every time he angered Asmodeus, he found himself pleading and praying for it.
Ketch grabbed him and dragged him out of the cell, oblivious to his trembling and whimpering, or maybe he just didn’t care. He had the archangel blade and one of the stolen remnants of Gabriel’s grace. What did he plan to use the blade for…?
As much as Gabriel struggled, he didn’t have the strength to pull out of Ketch’s grip as the man dragged him through the halls, cutting down demons wherever he saw them.
“This would all go so much faster,” Ketch grumbled as he grabbed Gabriel by the upper arm to pull him along, “if you would just flap your wings.” But he couldn’t do that, not without using some of his grace, and if he did that, Asmodeus would sense him, although he must’ve known where Gabriel was, and must’ve orchestrated this trap.
He couldn’t take that risk though, he could not use his grace.
Ketch would not let him run. He pushed forward, stabbing demons and leaving their bodies slumped on the floor. Asmodeus had really committed himself to this illusion of safety, since he was willing to kill so many of his own demons.
Every time he thought he could just curl into a corner and wait, smothered by the shadows, Ketch turned back to him with an annoyed glare. He grabbed Gabriel and yanked him to his feet, and no matter how hard he tried to pull away, run, hide somewhere till it was over, Ketch kept pushing ahead. After a while, Gabriel gave up on trying to run away, and put up no resistance to his “rescue” that could in no way be a rescue.
Ketch shoved him ahead and together they stumbled out of Hell. The stench of blood and sulfur vanished, and Gabriel realized he’d gotten so used to the smell of hellfire and demons that he didn’t notice it anymore till it faded out.
“Well,” Ketch said, “glad that’s done with. Now, this could be a very bad decision on my part, but there’s some people I do believe can help. Ever been to Kansas?”
Gabriel didn’t answer. Since he couldn’t speak, he could have just nodded or shook his head, but instead he recoiled against the wall, arms wrapped around himself, and trembled in the dark, giving no indication he’d even heard the question.
He had never been to this place, this old crumbling brick building the demons had taken over as their own gateway to Hell. He couldn’t see much of it in the dark, not that he wanted to. He did see a car though, parked in the shadows, out of sight of anyone who might’ve passed on the road.
Ketch looked him over and Gabriel whimpered under his stare. “Good thing it’s dark out, otherwise someone might realize just how suspicious this looks and call law enforcement.” He approached Gabriel, who flinched flat against the wall, but he had no more room to move back and couldn’t get away. “Will you relax? I just killed about two dozen demons to get you out of Hell and you’re still panicking?” He sighed. “Look, I know you’ve gone through a lot, but I’m going to take you somewhere safer, so I need you to stop trying to run from me.”
He reached out, much slower this time, and set a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. He tensed. Ketch didn’t move his hand.
“Just come with me,” he urged, nudging Gabriel off the wall. “Come on, let’s get in my car, since you won’t bother to fly us anywhere. You still do have wings, don’t you? You weren’t in Heaven, so you must.”
Still have his wings? What happened in Heaven?
Ketch opened the door to his car and hefted Gabriel into the back seat. He left Gabriel there for a moment while he rummaged around in the trunk for… well, probably some tools of torture. Chains, blades, thumbscrews, needles, spikes--but Ketch didn’t come back with anything like that. He handed Gabriel a white blanket, soon dirtied by the grime on his hands.
“Cover up with that, if anyone sees you in this condition I’ll end up in prison, and I do not have the time or energy to go to prison.” Ketch shut the door, then got into the driver seat. “Rest up, if you can. You look like you need it.”
Angels didn’t need sleep, especially not archangels, but so much of his grace had been torn from his body that he found himself truly exhausted lately.
He couldn’t sleep though, every time he tried, he only ever saw Asmodeus.
Gabriel wrapped the blanket around himself, covering everything but his face so he could still see, and shuffled along the seats till he couldn’t go any further, placing as much space between himself and Ketch as he could. Gabriel lowered himself to the floor of the car. Ketch glanced back at him, and with cold dread filling his blood, Gabriel heard the car’s doors and windows lock.
“Can’t have you trying to jump out,” he explained.
Can’t have him trying to escape.
Gabriel whimpered and curled into a tight ball, hiding behind the blanket. No matter how far they drove, he would never escape from Asmodeus. He had tried fighting, tried fleeing, tried bargaining, tried begging, tried total submission, and nothing ever eased his suffering. Asmodeus had his grace, linking them together.
Gabriel couldn’t hide from him, especially if he used his grace. Even if he only healed some of the scratches off his face or evaporated the blood and dirt staining his skin, that would still be enough. Asmodeus would find him, assuming he didn’t already know where Gabriel was, which he probably did, and then he would drag Gabriel back into hell and eviscerate him, de-bone him, flay him to the nerve, and Gabriel had no way to stop it. So he pressed his head to his knees and sobbed, breaking down in the dark at the mere thought of the inevitable.