Gabriel/Loki ficlet

[icarus_chained]

Weregild verse ficlet. For catyuy, who wanted Loki's POV of one of the Trickster's run-ins with the Winchesters. Guess which one I went for -_-;

Title:  Point of Mercy and of Fear
Rating:  PG-13
Fandoms:  Supernatural and Norse Myth
Continuity:  Set during SPN 3x11, Mystery Spot
Characters/Pairings:  Loki, Gabriel, Sam. Mention of Dean, Lucifer and Michael, obliquely. Gabriel/Loki
Summary:  Tense moment during Sam's final confrontation with Trickster
Wordcount:  442
Warnings:  Went a bit grimmer than the last couple ...
Disclaimer:  Not mine

Point of Mercy and of Fear

For a second, as the boy begged for his brother, as the human begged them --no, the Trickster ... no, Gabriel, because this was no action of their composite identity, this was no action of his, this was all Gabriel-- as the boy begged for the chance to have his brother back, as Loki coiled quivering underneath Gabriel and felt him stare into Winchester's desperate, bleak expression ... he remembered, suddenly, why he feared the archangel, once upon a time. He remembered what it was like to be helpless before this being, to be chained and at his mercy, to know, in some desperate place inside him, that this creature would delight in destroying him. He remembered that.

This thing ... this beginning of an end, this Apocalypse come a-whispering, this trap closing around Gabriel's future from all sides ... It brought back the cruel, desperate thing that came to him in his bonds beneath the earth. It brought back the thing that bought him, body and soul, that invaded him and owned him and stole him for itself. It brought back the Gabriel he saw before the softening, before his children, before the warmth that has grown between them.

This boy. His brother. The whispers of the future in their blood, the faces of archangels behind their eyes that only Gabriel could see, the devil's face that pleaded for his brother's life, the general's eyes as he died over and over, the futures writ upon human flesh ... they shook his archangel to his core. Shook him, tore him, woke something savage and desperate inside him. Made Gabriel again that desperate, furious, cruel thing.

And Loki ... all Loki could do was ride it out. Wrap close, tamp down the raw edge of his archangel's pain, his fury, and ride it out until it was finished. Until the ravaged edge of grief spun lose and faded, and Gabriel was his once more. While his archangel stared into the depths of determination and despair behind a human's eyes, while a life hung between the present and future and Gabriel's ability to set them apart ... Loki hung on. Held tight. Between the fear of his past and Gabriel's future, and the trust ... the trust in their present. The trust in what they had become. Loki held on. Loki held tight.

And Gabriel ... chose. And the savage creature that held a life in his hands, as he had held Loki's before, the archangel, Gabriel ... looked at a creature bound before his mercy ... and chose.

And in that moment, there was more, so much more ... for Loki to remember.