everlasting

The festival was a headache enough without being voluntold by her supervisor to run the first aid tent, but for some reason everyone and their mother decided to hurt themselves today, filling her tent with an unending line of fussy people demanding medical care, even though the number one issue people were coming in with was simple dehydration, or sunburns due to poor planning. Currently she was examining the scraped knee of a stocky 4 year old- the little girl was unphased and itching to get back to the cotton candy stand but her mother was beside herself, questioning everything from the brand of antiseptic Brianne was cleaning the scrape with to what kind of adhesive was used in the bandaid her daughter was currently trying to stick to her shirt like a sticker. 

She heaved a sigh of relief when they finally left, before waving in her next ‘patient’. There appeared to be nothing wrong with them, beyond the rosy spray of a sunburn spreading across their nose- but they were in a panic, something about their magic malfunctioning?

“I’m not sure if that’s really a medical issue? Definitely not one that could be dealt with by first aid methods, I’m kind of restricted to bandaids and electrolytes here…” Maybe heat exhaustion effected magic? She turned to grab a bottle of water for them but just as she touched the bottle the overhead lights flickered once, twice, and then burnt out with a flash. The already on edge waiting area explodes into panic, and Brianne closes her eyes to ward off the sharp tang of migraine that swells. Fucking fantastic.

constantine doesn’t make a habit of listening in on conversations, except those that interest him. he hovers just near the edge of the tent, not quite inside it but not entirely out from under it. he had walked over from a nearby food stand with the same complaint (except his involved funnel cakes and the failed acquisition spell through the back of the food tent). he watches her turn to grab something for the person and ducks inside to ask for one of his own. his hand is half raised, ready to voice his interruption— when he’s interrupted. 

the exclamations are the first thing he registers as his eyes adjust to the sudden change in lighting. it takes a moment, but when his vision finally focuses it’s on brianne, who still hasn’t turned back around. he recognizes her pausing for what it is, and is quick to act. he flips around on his heels, gently shoving the current patient out of the tent bounds. the entrance is luckily small enough that he can keep the others out without his magic, but he can’t reach the flaps that are tied up at the top of the archway. 

panic rapidly descends into chaos.

it’s a flurry of events in a quick spur of moments. people begin trying to push past him in the dark, someone punches him across the face as he’s trying to push them back, and he somehow musters what little magic strength he seems to have left to untie the tent flaps and shut them. he steps back and watches as they do as they were charmed to, and solidify into steel upon closing. 

“thank gods for this city’s stupid privacy charms,” he mutters. he flips back to brianne. “you okay?”

As with Ben before, Ezra’s question is blatantly ignored by the group. Instead, the apropos leader of the group interrogates Ben about the power, and Ezra frowns in concern hearing that the power is supposedly out all across town. He slips his phone from his pocket and sure enough, there is a little exclamation point next to a grayed out wifi symbol. No service. The hospital has generators, and it’s a well-known fact that Ez spends majority his offshift hours here, so he’s not too concerned about being inaccessible if he does end up needing to go back. He is more worried about Brianne, who got stuck on festival first aid duty. She didn’t handle stress, or sudden changes, or large crowds, or… much of anything, really, very well. 

“Maybe something blew because of the festival? It’s never happened before, but it’s not impossible.” He looks over his shoulder to where the moodkillers had settled, still muttering ominously amongst themselves. “Or maybe it’s an elaborate ruse to maim and kill us both? Those people are unsettling, I wouldn’t put it past them.” he adds sagely, turning back to Ben. 

“Does your phone still work? Or the landline, maybe? See if someone less aggressive can explain.”

his eyes are still glued to the stragglers in the corner booth as he had begun to idly wipe down the bar, listening to ezra intently. “they can go ahead and try,” he starts, looking at ezra with a smug smile. “you know they’ll need more than a few fancy spells and trick shots to get at me.” he moves on a little ways down the bar, dragging the cloth over the sparkling clean surface for good measure. 

“hmm...” he steps towards the landline and pulls his phone half way out of his pocket as he walks, just enough for the screen to light the NO SIGNAL text at the top. the phone slides back into his jeans as he drops it to raise the landline receiver to his ear. 

beepbeepbeep. “figured,” he mutters, dropping the receiver onto its stand on the back counter. he turns and returns the few steps to ezra. “no dice. i don’t know what’s happening but...” a quick pause. “it sounds like people are getting off the street. i don’t know. your old man’s probably doing his thing now, and we’ll get some announcement soon i bet.”

Michael’s presence makes a lot more sense now. Cass had expected some Big Problem to have occurred, but this… His expression sours slightly at the thought of their other siblings dropping by unannounced; all the times in the world to contact him and apparently it was only worth the effort when life in Heaven and on Earth was threatened. An expected but unpleasant revelation.

“How the hell did a mortal manage to get their hands on an opening ritual?” Is his gut reaction, but really, honestly? It kind of tracks. Salem just drew chaos like flies to honey. Peace was an unheard of concept no matter where Cassiel resided unfortunately, and his time in Salem had been suspiciously quiet thus far. 

He scoffs when Michael offers up his own brand of sage advice, cocking his hip against the lone armchair that made up the rest of his sparse living room furniture.

“Leave? And where would you suggest I go, Michael? Where could anyone go to avoid the fallout from this? If Falling wasn’t enough to get away, what’s going to change if I move a few states over?”

there’s little reaction to the sardonic response but michael lifts his right leg to rest his ankle on the opposite knee (in the way he’s seeing other ‘men’ do). he looks uncharacteristically relaxed and in-place against the plain mortal living room as he listens to his brother’s words. he shrugs, holding eye contact with cassiel as he earnestly says, “anywhere but here.”

lucifer’s identity had been left undisclosed to all but the archangels— he debates now whether or not he should tell his brother. it would be near impossible to point out the real danger to salem without doing so. he glances away, eyes averting slightly to the chair the other angel leans against. 

Leo poked his head out from behind the curtain, heavy brows furrowing when the crowd’s attention shifts from the singer currently putting their play to shame to something else. Worried frowns and discontented whispers ripple through the crowd like a slow wave, and it’s not long, probably less than a minute, before it’s clear the show has lost its audience. The Mayor appears out of nowhere on the stage looking as put together as ever, and claims technical difficulties. A few words that sound more like a dismissal than anything else, and the Mayor is gone as quickly as he came.

Throngs of people exited the festival grounds in varying degrees of confusion and panic, performers and guests alike, and Leo quickly manages to get separated from the rest of his group. He turns back to try and spot them, but ends up smacking into a man whose quick reflexes save them from being trampled by the slow-moving crowd. 

“Oh crap, sorry! I was just trying to find someone…” he trails off, huffing an annoyed breath when someone barrels past, knocking their shoulder into Leo in the process. “But I guess stopping in the middle of all this wasn’t the smartest thing to do. Seems like an awful lot of fuss for technical difficulties,” he adds, eying the security guards who are half assedly guiding people to the correct path and whispering intensely amongst themselves. He’s no sleuth but something much more interesting than faulty wiring is going on here. 

abel follows the kid’s gaze to guards, who seem to be doing the best they can with what little capabilities they might have. 

“c’mon,” he mumbles with an eye roll. grabbing hold of whatever’s nearest that allows him to drag the blond with him, he begins shoving his way through the thickening crowd. the power outage wasn’t anything that bothered him immediately, but the air’s gotten heavier and there’s an itch crawling down his spine. he stops where the street opens up onto one of the many roundabouts in the neighborhood, releasing the kid. 

the tin of joints in his pocket comes out before he looks at the stranger again. “this doesn’t seem to be a regular outage, then, does it?” he’s not looking for an answer as he plucks a gram out from between the bunch, sliding the tin and putting it away in the same motion. the filter nestles between his lips and he reaches up with his hand, index finger extended upwards. there’s a short pause, and if one looked closely enough under the dim starlight they might catch the slight widening of his eyes as the tip of his finger doesn’t light. 

Cass watches Michael peer out his window; it’s so fitting that he shows up on the cusp of disaster, and Cass wonders who had fucked up so badly that it drew heaven’s eye. His brother turns from the window to survey the apartment. The obvious disapproval rankles Cass’ nerves with a speed and acuteness that only his brothers can achieve, and he rolls his eyes at Michael’s attempt at niceties. 

“Yeah well, it serves its purpose well enough. You missed the housewarming party though, by a couple decades. Also, I didn’t invite you. So unless you have a very belated giftcard to bestow, can we get to why you’re here? Is it just you or should I expect more of these reunions?”

he’s never sure how his earth-bound siblings have taken to societal customs, but he’s always pleased when they drop the idle words. “i’m here alone.” the angel looks away briefly once more, turning to take a seat on the nearby couch. “but i can’t guarantee i’m the only one that will visit.” he’s never experienced the radio silence of a fallen angel, and sometimes he wonders if he might prefer it. 

“someone began an opening ritual.” he begins, referring to azrael’s cage and the gate it sits over. unfortunately for the angels of heaven, the placement of celestial portals on earth is entirely out of their hands. all they can do is guard the ones in existence and monitor new ones. “a mortal, here.”

michael had pointed out more than once how leaving an unborn archangel as a lone guard was an idiotic plan. he doesn’t personally care for the city, but keeping things where they should be makes his job all the easier. “you should leave while you can.”

Cass didn’t notice the power outage until a good 3 hours after it began. He’d forgotten his phone at the bar and he hadn’t bothered to go back for it since he had an early shift the next day. His shitty downtown apartment suffered a lack of lighting on the best of days, and more than once the super had cut power unannounced to a chunk of apartments to do repairs. So him sitting in the fading light of sunset eating his sad little dinner was not an altogether unheard of occurrence. But then the sun went down. Streetlights never clicked on. No cars rumbled past. The windows of the complex across the street stayed dark, no bright tv screens illuminating them.

Now concerned, Cass made a perfunctory go around of his apartment, testing any electronics he could find, not that there were many. Light switches, kitchen appliances, his desk lamp, even the little nightlight in the hallway to keep him from stumbling over shit in the dark- all dead.

A knock at the door jolts Cass from his confusion and he pulls it open with some hesitance, only for the person knocking to brush past him and into his apartment, because apparently that’s just a thing people do now.

“I- yeah, sure, come on in, i suppose…” he mutters, closing the door with some force.

michael strides past cassiel and stops just short of the nearest window, sliding the window covering open slightly with his finger. he peers out onto the darkened street, catching the tail end of a trio of youths shuffling into an alleyway across the way. his presence in this sack of a town has thus far been undetected, and he’s going to ensure it stays that way. he turns to look at his brother, giving him a quick once over before he looks around. 

After a 12 hour shift at the clinic the last thing Ezra was interested in doing was attending the town’s weird history festival thing. Instead he sat in his usual spot at Benny’s bar, nursing the same one drink and watching his friend work. Writing!Ben and Bartending!Ben were like two different people and Ez often found himself playing spot the difference when the other was too distracted to notice. Too tired to be the nuisance he usually aims to be with Ben, he’s content to sit in relative peace, throwing out the odd bit of bullying just to keep Ben on his toes. He can’t help himself, Ben’s face when he’s suffering well worth getting banned from the bar again.

Ezra is awoken from his daydreaming by the frantic jangling of the bell above the bar door, and he shoots Ben a baffled glance as a large group of maybe 8 people flood in, filling the previously empty space almost immediately. A quick survey of the bunch reveals little, but he doesn’t spot any injuries or pained expressions, just varying degrees of confusion and worry. Ben’s words go unacknowledged by most as people talk amongst themselves, and the girl closest to the door pulls it closed, turning the lock for good measure.

“Well??” He finally asks when no further explanation is offered. “What the hell is going on out there?”

these are some RUDE motherfuckers. the rag in his hand is tossed over his shoulder as ben watches the group of people split up into smaller sections, ignoring the two at the bar. one of them finally breaks off and seems to lead the pack as they approach. ‘how are these lights still on? everything outside just went down.’

benjamin stares for a brief second, not fully understanding the question. the air feels aggressive suddenly, not what you’d imagine for having a working electrical grid. “wha— the lights are out?” he would look out the window if their building manager ever got around to approving the construction order. he’s just going to have to take this guy’s word for it. the intruder doesn’t seem like the type to appreciate any banter, so ben does the next best thing to get him off his back. “the whole building’s on a composting generator. go back to your buddies, i’ll send a round over.”

he shifts back to his position near ezra, his eyes following the group to the table they choose by the back of the bar. “what the hell’s his problem?” brown eyes land back on his friend across the counter. “i feel like the yelling outside is a little dramatic for a power outage.”

“THIS IS THE END….                    HOLD YOUR BREATH AND COUNT TO TEN”

the festivities began on the 4th of july, just like any other year, a week before the anniversary of the foundation of salem. zi de istorie. day of history. the week of celebration includes booths upon booths of foods, games, and goods lining the streets of town square. many of these pay tribute to the early foundation of salem, including goods exclusively made by the oldest of salem’s residents. the first two days of the celebration itself is a collaborative effort to honor the early years of the city’s existence. visitors can enjoy the citywide parade, the 5-block wide renaissance fair, or the two hour play of how julian austere, the city’s founder, created salem. presented four times as a matinee and evening show between the two days, the always evolving show is a long loved hit. it was originally written by the local high school and has taken a life of it’s own over the decades. now, audience members are often welcomed to join the stage by actors, and no two shows are ever alike.