#abreel

     The hands, that are not quite Gadreel's, but are occupied by his grace, ball into fists that aren't his either, and push into the meat of the thighs connected to it. The eyes, right now, are all Gadreel's. Fixated on nothing with a blank and yet troubled gaze, body taking breaths which shake in response to emotion that isn't its own. The eyes are glazed, somewhere between horrified and vacant, and the fingers grasp at the jeans covering the legs. The shoulders shake. This body isn't his, but it reacts like it is, it displays like it is.

      "How old?" Abner repeats. Gadreel hears this time. He halfway snaps out of it, but not quite, not entirely. He's still lost, and he knows Abner can see- they knew each other, and near only each other, for centuries upon centuries, millennia upon millennia. The physical bodies they're in don't disrupt their ability to read each other. But Abner, he can tell, is angry. Frustrated, shaken, horrified. Gadreel is no killer, and they both know it, and yet-

      "Eighteen." The word barely makes it from his mouth, and hangs in the air like an anvil on a thread. Eighteen. Eighteen. Eighteen. Kevin Tran was eighteen. He will never be nineteen, or twenty, or twenty-one, he was eighteen, and now will always be eighteen, and Gadreel has made it so, he has placed the period in the middle of the sentence, he has ended a path, cut off a.

      "Eighteen?" Abner doesn't raise his voice, but his shoulders tense, and his eyebrows furrow, and his jaw clenches and his fists ball and worse, his eyes prick with tears.

      "Eighteen." Gadreel repeats. He does not make eye contact. He cannot make eye contact. If he makes eye contact, he will break.

      "This isn't redemption, Gadreel." Abner starts. "This is destruction." Abner's voice gets a little louder. "Gadreel, they are making you into what they call you."

      "No." Gadreel's response is instant, and it is sharp, and it is shaking, and he still does not make eye contact. "No." He repeats. "I am saving Heaven. I am saving us." It feels like a lie. It feels like a knife, twisting into his grace, it feels like his body on the floor of Heaven's prison, bathed in cold light and watched by every eye, from every corner.

      Abner looks sad. Abner looks heartbroken. Abner looks as though Gadreel had struck him. He never would. And yet. He looks at him like that. And eye contact is not made, but Gadreel can feel the look. And the gentle voice, which says "No," softly, "You are being deceived."

      Despite Gadreel's best efforts to be gentle with this body, with this form that is not his, the way the fingers dig into the jeans and the legs beneath feel as though they might break the fragile skin and draw droplets of blood. He's not sure he can bear to see another drop of blood.

      "I am not."

      Abner sighs, and he stands up from his chair. "Do you want a cup of coffee?" He asks, as though they were both human, as though they were not just speaking of atrocities.

      "No." Gadreel says. "But you are welcome to one." He doesn't make eye contact. Abner leaves the room. Gadreel pulls a small yellow piece of paper from the pocket, and he unfolds it, and he holds it in shaking and calloused hands.

      "ABNER."       "Your next target." He remembers Metatron saying, with a smile. The smile makes knots in the stomach, metaphorically. Gadreel must have been given away by a look, because Metatron said "What?", and shrugged his small shoulders, and reached up to put a hand on the back of this body. The body shudders in response. "I know, it's hard, it's not you. But think about it, you, and me? We're saving Heaven. We're fixing everything, Gadreel. It all just comes with a little price tag." The hands had tensed on the paper, crumpling its edges. "Unless you wanna be The Traitor forever, I mean. By all means, keep living your life the way you're living it, but that's no life if you ask me."

      Gadreel did not turn him down. And Gadreel did not expect to find Abner, either. And yet, Abner is in the other room, making coffee. Abner who has a wife, and a child, who has a family, and exactly the life he always spoke of wanting, Abner, who has never been anything but good to him. Abner, who is inexplicably, indescribably, more to him than anything or anyone else has ever, or will ever be. The hands tense on the paper, crumpling its edges. Gadreel closes his eyes, and stands, and pockets the little piece of paper. Breath hitches as his blade slides into the palm, and the fingers curl around the hilt.

      When Gadreel has Abner pinned on the carpeted flooring, he does not make eye contact. He makes a thin incision across Abner's throat, and holds the hand over it. Abner cannot speak. Gadreel can barely speak. "Go. You need to go. Far away, and do not look back, do not come to find me. You can take your family but do not come to look for me, do not come to look for him, do not come to look for them. Speak to no angel, keep your head to the soil, stay far from every connection, do you understand? Stay far from every connection. Do not find me. I cannot kill you. I am supposed to."

      He makes eye contact. Abner's eyes are full of tears. So are Gadreel's.

      "I love you. I am sorry."

     The hand moves from the cut, and Abner spills from it- Not as blood, no, but as grace, spilling from an open wound and swirling through the ceiling of the home, and leaving Gadreel alone. The throat is sliced once more, and to sell the trick, Gadreel's blade plunges through the chest, through the heart. It does not beat. There is blood everywhere. Gadreel goes to the restroom, and he breaks. The hands are run under the water, scrubbed, lathered, scrubbed, lathered, wrung, too many times for him to count, and the red does not leave them. The blood still covers the hands, and he cannot think of anything else. They get the metaphorical drop on him.