#mercykillweek2017

Angela bounced out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. “I decided to cook for you.”

Gabriel’s eyebrow immediately shot up. “You barely sleep at night for claims that you’re too busy to function but you found time to cook for me?”

“Well, we’ve been married for close to a month now and I wanted to do something special for you,” she said, and then took his hands and led him into the kitchen, seating him at the kitchen table as she stirred the pot on the stove and agitated something in the pan with a spatula.

Gabriel watched her, a smirk pulling at the sides of his lips as he drank in her the back of he, admiring her slim shoulders and ample hips and bottom. He stood and pressed himself up against her back, hands on her shoulders, and began to kiss her throat and ear. “You look damn good, cooking for me. Not sure if I’m hungry for dinner anymore.”

Angela laughed and elbowed him lightly, her elbow colliding with the hard muscle of his abs under his sweater. “You’re such a man. I can’t—“

He noticed what she was cooking. “Chilaquiles? Oh, we have time.” He scooped her up against her loud protests, flipped the heat onto low and carried her off into their bedroom.

~~

“Oh good, it isn’t burned,” Angela said when she returned to the kitchen, wearing only her robe now, her short bob hanging around her face.

Gabriel emerged from the room in a pair of sweats, shirtless in all his caramel skinned glory, and grabbed a beer from the fridge. “You know, chilaquiles is one of my favorites. You call my sister?”

“Yes.”

“And...she didn’t bother telling you it’s usually a breakfast dish?”

Angela sighed. “I knew the fact that it asked for eggs was suspect.”

Gabriel chuckled. “Pobrecita.” He took a swig ofbhis beer. He sat back down at the table and watched his wife with admiration as she finished their dinner in only a robe, before putting a plate of it in front of him. He grinned. “Ah well, who am I to say no to breakfast for dinner?”

Angela stood, nervously watching as he took his first bite. At first, his face lit up at the delicious flavor and Angela began to soothe, but then he started to cough and heave as he took a long swig of his beer.

“Angie,” he choked, “babe, how many of the red chilis did you use in the sauce?”

“All of them...?”

“Didn’t you use a recipe?” He coughed as he stood up and got a glass of water from the sink, his beer now gone.

“Just the one your sister gave me,” Angela replied, blushing sheepishly, clearly not used to making Mexican food—or cooking at all. “Is it too spicy?”

Gabriel chuckled around his red face and dry throat as he nodded and chugged his water. “Yeah, but that’s not your fault, baby. Lupe knows I can’t handle spicy food. Even this far away, she still manages to find a way to mess with me.”

But Angela didn’t see the humor. Her special surprise was ruined now, and as he turned to look at her, he could see that it upset her that it was. Finishing his water, he approached her and touched her shoulders with his large hands, smiling.

“Thanks for dinner, Ange. Tell you what—why don’t we order takeout, go back to the bedroom and watch that stupid Disney movie you like so much, and maybe...wear in our bed a couple times more, hm?” He grinned widely.

Angela shrugged, but softened when she felt his large arms around her. She smiled against his chest, inhaled his scent, and nodded. “Next time, I promise I won’t ask your sister for help.”

Gabriel pursed his lips nervously and chuckled a little as he led her into their room. “Uhh, babe, how about you just let me do the cooking from now on?”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”

His own black suit was disheveled now, his tie undone, and he gestured to the chair next to him, barely acknowledging her as she sat down, and he ordered another bourbon from the bartender.

Angela was quiet for a moment, her hands in her lap, but she startled a little when the new drink was slid in front of her. Her brows furrowed.

Jesse stared straight ahead, took another swig of his drink, and mumbled, “Orphans shouldn’t drink alone.” He gave her a sideways glance and a bitter smirk. “Neither should widows.”

The sting of both words hit her like a train, and she picked up the glass and swirled the brown liquid but didn’t take a drink. Her eyes became glassy, as she looked down at her reflection in the caramel fluid. “...I tried to save him.”

Jesse hardened a little bit. “I know.”

“He—“

“—would’ve died either way. I know. Just wish we’da had a body to bury,” he mumbled, finishing his glas and ordering another. “That’s all.”

There was a pregnant silence, in which Angela blinked back tears. He noticed how confused and broken she seemed and he let his shoulders slump, placing his new glass down. Gabriel wouldn’t have wanted him to resent her. There weren’t many of them left anymore. Jack and Ana were gone. And now Gabe.

But as he reached out to touched her shoulder, he felt a single warm tear roll down his face and he scoffed and turned away from her, taking a long drink of his bourbon.

It was then he felt the hand on his shoulder, and he looked at her with wide eyes, noticing the way tear fell freely now. His brows furrowed with a sort of understanding and he had to blink a few times not to let his own emotions flood out of his eyes.

“He was proud of you,” Angela whispered. “He told me every chance he got. He never wanted you or Genji to take the fall for Blackwatch.”

“So, he did, and it got him and Jack killed! Some father. Some brother,” Jesse spat.

“He and Jack killed each other out of jealousy and anger; resentment.” Angela replied, choking back more tears. “He was proud of you.”

Jesse looked at her again, noticing how she was trying to be strong now—how she was trying to be the sister. The other half of Gabe. His brows furrowed again as he looked down at his drink, and he saw a ripple bubble up, and then another as tears began to fall. He growled, and shrugged as he swiped at his eyes quickly. “You know, you don’t have to take his place. You just lost your husband. You don’t have to act so strong.”

When he looked at he again, he was shocked to find she was again crying, but her expression was earnest and strong. She slid her arms around him, a soft, motherly embrace despite their closeness in age, and he heard only three words leave her lips:

“Neither do you.”

He wasn’t sure if it was because he was half drunk, or if he really just needed the reassurance of knowing he could with her, but he nestled his face into her shoulder, and broke down.

They never found Jack’s body, but he got a gravestone.

They found Gabriel’s, though. Half alive, barely breathing, broken beyond belief.

She found Gabriel’s. She was looking for it. For him. She could barely remember screaming for him. She knew she has been but the sound of destruction and possible death was deafening.

She tried to fix him. She tried.

She knew what sort of chemicals had enhanced him. Kept him from aging as fast, sped up the healing process in his body, enhanced his strength. She knew him. Intimately.

How else does a woman know her husband, after all?

Fear and anxiety, rage, pain, andrenaline all rushed through her as she altered the biological and chemical makeup the serum that had created him—enhanced it—and pumped it straight into his body, hoping to enhance his healing functions.

She’ll never forget his screams as his body morphed and changed, his skin grew pale, dead looking, and then, as if in her worst nightmare, he seemed to just...evaporate in a cloud of black smoke. Gone. Dead.

Jack had a tombstone. She’d had to fight to get Gabriel one.

And now, the anniversary of his death—of her biggest personal and professional mistake—was upon her.

She hated remembering. She hated that, no matter where she was in the world, she visited that gravestone every year.

And every year: “I’m so sorry.” As she laid flowers on his grave. Her wedding ring hung around her neck now, tucked away.

This year was no different. She entered the graveyard, a small one, very remote, in the Los Angeles foothills. No one but she and a few others knew where she had put the empty grave. She carried white roses, and her ring was dangling in the open tonight as she fixed her scarf and knelt in front of the stone.

Tears filled her eyes as she touched the name on the writing. A moment of weakness few else ever saw anymore, if at all. “I’m so sorry. I never meant this for you.”

It was silent for a moment, and then she felt the air grow colder and she looked up. Familiar dark smoke appeared in front of her and then a creature in black with an ominous skull mask stood behind the grave, a large shotgun pointed at her where she knelt.

She didn’t know how, but she could tell how focused the monster was on her, and her eyes widened. This was him; the Reaper who had been hunting them down.

“So, you’ve come for me, then...” This was the first time she’d ever seen him. She had half a mind to reach for her pistol, tucked away in a holster under her coat. But then she looked at Gabriel’s name again and bowed her head. “Go on, then.”

“Just now. What did you say to him?”

When she lifted her head again, his masked face was in her bubble, and she jerked away a little, brows furrowing. “I...I said I never meant this for him.”

There was a dark, growling chuckle, and he lifted the ring around her neck with the end of his gun, examining it. He chuckled again and stood, his voice dropping low and menacing. “You knew exactly what you were doing.”

Her head whipped up again to look at him, and she noticed the gleam of something falling out from beneath his robes, hanging around his neck. Her eyes widened to the size of saucers. “Gabriel?”

She jumped up, lunged to touch him, catch him, even remove the mask, but like before, like the worst day of her life, and in a poor of black smoke, he was gone.

“So, you’re not going to kill me then?!” She cried up to the emptiness. “I deserve it! What have I done to you?! Gabriel...Reaper...whoever you are! What have I...”

She looked down at the gravestone. “What have I done?” She touched the writing and began to cry, softly. “I’m so sorry...”

After a moment, she felt arms around her from behind, and the strange sensation of lips on her cheek, the skin rough, scarred, thin like decay, but so familiar. Then, it was gone. And Angela Ziegler stood, looking up at the sky again, eyes still wet but her face firm and full of strength. “I love you. And if it takes the rest of my life, I’ll fix this.” And with that, she placed the roses down and left, to return to her work, to her missions and with a new sense of strength and purpose.

He was usually a broad, caramel canvas in which her small, pale painted form rested, and she would draw circles against the landscape of his chest and talk about work, or meetings, or sometimes she would nod off to sleep immediately, because she didn’t sleep enough as it was.

And sometimes, they would just lie in silence, awake, listening to the other’s breathing or heartbeat, drinking in the moment like it was the last.

Angela was tracing each of the scars on his chest that night, trying to memorize them all, calculatingly. “Someday, I will make such leaps and strides in the medical field and healing technologies, you’ll never bare another scar.”

Gabriel chuckled and traced his hands up and down her back. “I thought you liked the scars? You told me they were sexy.”

“They mean I’m not doing my job—they mean you’re getting hurt and everytime you come home with a new one, it was one step closer to my losing you.”

Gabriel frowned deeply, and pulled her closer, letting her small form spread out atop his larger one a little bit. “Stop thinking like that, Angie. I always come home to you, don’t I?”

“I wish Jack would let me go out with you on your assignments. I could keep you healed in real time instead of having to fix you later.” She laid her cheek against his pectoral and sighed. “It’s stressful to be a doctor and a wife at the same time, to the same person.”

Gabe’s hand went to her short blonde hair and slid into the tendrils gently, massaging the scalp. “You do a damn good job at it, though. Especially the wife part.” He grinned a little, trying to cheer her up.

“It’s not funny, Gabriel!” She cried, suddenly and sat up. She felt two broad arms slide around her after a moment, and squeeze, and two loving lips brush her shoulder.

“I know, babe. I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Maybe someday, you won’t have to worry about me getting hurt so much.”

She looked st him earnestly. “We could retire soon, from all of this. The attacks are lessening. We could get a real house, with a yard. We could have animals and...children, maybe?”

Gabe’s brows furrowed a little. He was a soldier. It’s all he’d really ever known. He’d never had a father, so he never much thought about being one himself. But damn, if he didn’t love Angela Ziegler like she was oxygen and he was suffocating. Still...

He offered her a small, half-smile, and whispers, “Something like that, Ange. When it’s over. When it’s all over. We gotta keep fighting ‘til then.”

Angela’s shoulders slumped a little, but she smiled back, even if it didn’t quite reach her eyes. It was what she love most about him—his fighting spirit. His protective nature. His willingness to sacrifice himself to make their world just a little safer. He did it in his way; she did it in hers.

Settling back against him, she closed her eyes. “Promise?”

Gabriel slid his arms around her, and glanced at the ceiling for a moment, before pressing a kiss into her hair. “Promise.”

~~

“Are you ready?” came the voice from the doorway, the Irish lilt unmistakable. Gabriel could just make out the silhouette and shock of red hair on the woman as he finished dressing and glanced at his sleeping wife, uncertain.

The woman stepped out of the shadow and smirked despite the ice in her gaze as she watched the sleeping doctor, overstepping her boundaries by even being in their home. She touched Gabriel’s shoulder. “It’s best not to tell her. But just think of it...how much safer you’ll come home to her when we’re done. Able to move faster, to dodge enemy fire. How happy she’ll be to see it—her beloved husband, home from battles, in one piece.”

In one piece...

Gabriel glanced at Angela one last time—and then nodded at Moira O’Deorain firmly. “Let’s go.”

He didn’t believe in or care for fairytales. But damn, if he didn’t fall in that fairytale sort of love with Angela Ziegler. The kind of love that made a 36 year old military man sit down with his girlfriend and watch those stupid fairytales because she loved them so much.

And her favorite? Beauty and the Beast. From his perspective, he couldn’t really understand why, but when he asked her why she adored it so much, it was simple and clear: a story about a young, determined, passionate woman who values intelligence above all else and never gives up on her aspirations.

Every time they watched the movie after that, he could see his Angie in Belle. Her fire, her passion, her love. He never really related himself to the Beast though. He was the goofball, the soldier, the Blackwatch commander only when he needed to be. He wasn’t some hulking man, barking orders, scaring others. He wasn’t a monster.

“No,” she would agree, “but you had a hard upbringing, you’re not exactly soft and I still managed to convince you to watch Disney movies with me every weekend.”

Gabriel could only smile. She was so innocent back then, despite her fierceness of character. Perhaps, they both were, and all he could do was slide an arm around her shoulders and hum ‘Something There’ was she sang along—he’d seen it enough times, after all. And he would watch it as many times more as she desired.